Research Papers

Overview of TRALEG publications

• Does school make people believe in meritocracy?
  Tenret Elise
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  This paper aims at explaining the perception of social inequalities and the support for an education-based meritocracy (EBM) among individuals. The level and type of education impact has been closely investigated – at a macro and micro level –, as education is theoretically supposed to influence the support for dominant ideologies. To this end, the third wave of Issp survey dataset has been used, as well as the results of a survey conducted in France among tertiary students attending different tracks and fields of study (Sts, Iut, Classes préparatoires and University). This research shows that education influences the representations of meritocracy at both micro and macro levels. From an individual point of view, it has been established that people with higher degree and lower degree tend to perceive more often their society as meritocratic (“U” curve effect of education on representations), and that more educated people defend more the importance of diplomas than the others. In addition to this relative effect of diploma, it has been evidenced, at a more macrosocial level, that the school system organization and development also has an effect on the representations of meritocracy: the educational stock of a country, measured by the percent of persons attending tertiary education, increases the justification of social inequality, while the percent of social science students decreases it. The French case has been specifically examined. In France, the criticism of diplomas seems to derive from its incapacity, according to students, to reflect one's competencies or merits.
• Institutional determinants of Justice Evaluations
  Koçer, R.G., Werfhorst H., van de
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  The sense of justice is one of the crucial features that distinguishes human beings from other creatures. The existence and satisfaction of this particular feeling is one of the basic conditions of societal existence. In practice the sense of justice, rather than requiring unconditional equality among individuals, implies ranking of inequalities: considering some of them fair and the others unfair. There are several crucial questions regarding the sense of justice as legitimate ranking of inequalities: what is the source of these evaluations? Do they change from one individual to another or do they remain constant within societies? To what extent sense of justice is shaped by institutional conditions of societies?The empirical work on the determinants of sense of justice as legitimate ranking of inequalities has developed across two lines: first, there are studies which scrutinize the way in which individuals judge the fairness of earnings, second, there is a literature on individual attitudes towards redistribution policies. One may use both of these fields to scrutinize the sources of justice evaluations. However, the outcome of research on attitudes towards redistribution policies seems to be based on assumptions which implicitly imply that the sense of justice prevailing in a society is aggregation of individual attitudes whose source either remain unexplained or considered to be indirectly and accidently determined by decisions of some elites for whom, however, determinants of sense of justice remains obscure. Thus, the research on redistribution attitudes does not provide any analytical tool or conceptualization besides considering the characteristics of individuals as exogenous variables to be used in the scrutiny of sense of justice prevailing in a society. On the other hand , research on individuals’ judgment about earnings’ distribution points out existence of a societal normative consensus on justice which guides individuals. Findings suggest that although this consensus may differ, to some extent, across subgroups, it still remains influential for the entire societies, thus the implicit suggestion is that the prevailing sense of justice in a society, rather than being a mere aggregation of individual attitudes, might be generated by ‘external conditions’ to which all members of the society are exposed. This , of course, points out another analytical perspective than the one implied by redistribution attitudes research: the sense of justice is not mere aggregate of individuals’ judgments, there is a societal consensus on justice, which seems to be not entirely determined by individuals’ characteristics while influencing individuals’ justice evaluations. Therefore, instead of using individuals’ characteristics to account for the sense of justice in a society, one may scrutinize the sources of societal normative consensus on justice in order to explain justice evaluations of individuals. In other words, explaining the source of societal consensus without referring to individuals’ characteristics would allow us to account for the source of justice evaluations at individual level. This goal of our paper.
• Institutional determinants of public opinion on pay differentials: a macro level exploration of the interaction between education system, wage centralization and social policy
  Kocer, Rüya Gökhan, van de Werfhorst, Herman
  Abstract
  This article explores the possible impact of three institutional structures (education system, labor market institutions and social policy arrangements) on the public opinion on educational pay differentials by using cross national aggregate data (OECD countries). First it examines the hypothesis that so long as education system provides the opportunity to acquire the competencies that are valued in the market, and, social policies provide sufficient protection from market failures, individuals would accept educational pay differentials as a fair outcome which would, in turn, lead to the majority to have a favorable opinion on these differentials. The alternative hypotheses, on the other hand, emphasizes the impact of the nature of the wage determination on the formation of the public opinion by claiming that unless pay determination is centralized and possibilities for skill upgrading are provided (i.e. unless the necessary conditions for internalizing the systemic pay outcome are created) the public opinion on pay differentials would not be favorable regardless of the qualities of the education system and social policy. The implied micro mechanism is that so long as pay is largely determined by low level bargaining (i.e., enterprise, factory, individual) people would be inclined to evaluate the emerged outcome negatively despite the opportunities offered by the education system and risks covered by the social policy. By revealing the strengths and weaknesses of (and overlaps between) these two hypotheses the paper tries to account for the institutional determinants of public opinion on pay differentials. In the conclusion section, possible juxtapositions of these three institutional structures (education system, wage determination, social policy) would be revealed and the impact of particular ideal case institutional settings on legitimization of pay differentials is discussed.
• Perceived Social Justice and Legitimacy of Stratification Order in Postsocialist Estonia
  Paškov, M.
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  The transition of post-socialist countries into democratic and liberal societies has brought about both, privileges and burdens. Estonia together with a fast modernization process and excellent performance on an international level (membership of NATO and European Union in 2004) is often characterized as a country that has gone through a ‚successful transition’. On the other hand, empirical studies have shown overwhelming dissatisfaction among the public with the outcomes of reforms concerning social justice, employment opportunities, and the general living standard. The latter poses threat to a stable development of democracy and causes a socalled ‚deficit of legitimacy’. Current paper evaluated the perceived social justice and legitimacy of the stratification system in Estonian society. The data is from the International Social Justice Project of 1991 and 1996, and from the Estonian Social Justice Survey carried out in 2004. The results indicate that people have negative attitudes about the way distributive justice works in the society throughout the whole transition period. Thus people think there are no equal opportunity, no fair reward for input and peoples' basic needs are not satisfied. However, from 1991 to 2005 there is a positive trend – people perceive more social justice. It appears that the legitimacy of stratification order is to a large extent predicted by individual characteristics. Groups of people that support capitalistic principles and hold higher positions in the society are the ones more likely to have more positive perceptions about social justice. The opposite holds for people from lower social positions who oppose capitalistic viewpoints. Interestingly, the cleavage between different groups with regard to perceived social justice has changed over the years. This indicates that the variability of life-chances that is brought about by the transition period (due to the growth of income inequality for instance) has somewhat changed the disparity in the perceptions of social justice among different social groups.
• The Relation between Economic Globalization and Trust in the Generalized Other: an Empirical Analysis in the OECD Countries
  Frangi, L.
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  This paper aims to develop and empirically verify, through theoretical references and a secondary data analysis, an hypothesis about the relation between the economic globalization and the generalized trust in people - this latter as an important aspect of macro social capital concept - for the OECD countries. As a first step the globalization phenomenon will be analyzed, stressing the importance and the impact of the economic significance and the fact that this element has consequences also at a sociocultural and political level, becoming an explosive trend in regard to the first modernity social milieu. The social capital concept will be later briefly introduced in its three possible analysis levels, focusing on the meaning of the concept as a feature that inheres to a macro social system, like the national one; the elements of this macro dimension, especially the trust in the generalized other, will be highlighted. After this outline of the theoretical framework, a secondary data analysis will be proposed to allow a comparison among the thirty OECD nations, in order to evaluate how the trust in generalized other in 2000 is related to a different economic globalization rate in 1995; there will be also an evaluation of the national wealth and industrialization influence on the above mentioned relation. If data about generalized trust in people in 1990 and economic globalization in 1985 will be available, the same regression model will be studied. Finally some reflections on the results, on their limits and on their possible interpretations will be suggested and a future research work will be proposed
• Weak performance – strong determination. Achievement and choice among ethnic minority students in Sweden
  Jonsson, Jan O., Rudolphi, Frida
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  We ask how the advantages and disadvantages of ‘second-generation’ immigrants’ educational careers in Sweden are produced, making a theoretical distinction between mechanisms connected with school performance on one hand, and educational choice on the other. Using a new data-set, covering six full cohorts of Swedish-born 9th-graders in 1998-2003 (n=563,087), with matched school-Census information, we show that the grades of children to immigrants generally lie 0.2–0.4 standard deviations below children of natives. In addition, they more often have incomplete grades in core subjects, which force a sizeable proportion – 10-20 percent among the ‘new’ (mostly non-European) second generation – into non-meritorious tracks or lead them to leave school. Given grades, pupils of immigrant origin make much more heterogeneous choices at upper secondary education. While many do not enrol in upper secondary education, among those who do the propensity is high that they choose academic studies before vocational, while the ‘old’ (chiefly Nordic) are similar to the majority group in their equal preference for vocational and academic tracks. All in all, relatively poor academic performance and high-aspiring choices combine to make second generation immigrants a polarized group.