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Prof Catherine Boone

This course is available on the BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in History and Politics, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (with a Year Abroad), BSc in Politics, BSc in Politics and Data Science, BSc in Politics and Economics, BSc in Politics and History, BSc in Politics and International Relations, BSc in Politics and Philosophy and BSc in Social Anthropology. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

The course is available in the third year only and capped at one group of students.

Rising levels of social inequality have attracted enormous attention in public discourse and social science research. What political consequences should we expect to see, and will these differ across countries? This course considers the distribution and drivers of different forms of social-economic inequality (income, spatial, urban/rural, ethnic/racial), and asks whether and how they produce different forms of politics in different parts of the world. Weekly readings and lectures center on significant works in global and comparative political economy. The course considers the hypothesis that the political salience of different forms of inequality (a.) varies over time and space, and (b.) that political institutions play an important role in conditioning the ways in which social inequalities become politically salient and find expression in the political arena.

Over the course of the term, the analytic focus of the class moves from the global level, to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, to developing countries. We consider how socio-economic structure, levels of development, and modes of integration into the global economy shape domestic forms of inequality, and how domestic institutions condition the political expression thereof. 

This course is delivered through seminars totalling 25 hours in the Winter Term. There will be a reading week in Week 6 of the Winter Term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 presentation in the WT.

This will be a class presentation outlining the proposed research question and theoretical framing of the 3,000 word summative paper.

Branco Milanovic, Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War (Belknap, 2024).

Mann, Michael, Riley, Dylan. 2006. “Explaining Macro-Regional Trends in Global Income  Inequalities, 1950–2000.” Socio-Economic Review 5(1):81–115.

Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Margaret Weir.  Who Gets What: The New Politics of Insecurity (Cambridge, 2021).

Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (University of California press, 1998).

Melissa Rogers, "Federalism and the Welfare State in Latin America", Regional and Federal Studies, 31:1, 2021: 163-184.

David Harvey. "The 'New' Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession." Socialist Register, 2004.

Alao, A. (2007). Natural Resources and Conflict in Africa: The Tragedy of Endowment. Rochester,  NY, USA; Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer.

Biniam Bedasso. 2017. "For richer, for poorer:  Why ethnicity often trumps economic cleavages in Kenya." Review of African Political Economy, 44/151: 10-29.

Østby, G., NordÃ¥s, R. and Rød, J. 2009. "Regional Inequalities and Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa." International Studies Quarterly, 53(2), pp.301-324.

Rozelle, Scott and Natalie Hell. Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China's Rise (Chicago, 2020).

Essay (80%, 3000 words) in the ST.
Essay plan (20%) in the WT.

The summative work consists of:

• one 3-page (1,000 word) proposal and outline for the 12-page assessed essay, week 5-7 (20%), and
• a 12-page (3,000 word) final class paper assessing different arguments about inequality and whether and how it produces political effects in light of comparative case study or large-N evidence (80%)