Political Inequality and the Welfare State

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Politics - General and Theories of International Politics, grade: 2,0, University of Mannheim, course: Ausgewählte Themen der Politischen Soziologie I: Public Opinion, Political Participation, and the Welfare State, language: English, abstract: In this research paper the relationship between social and political inequality, caused by the welfare state, is explored in detail. On the whole, it deals with the impact of the welfare state on the growing political inequality, which is assumed to result out of a produced increasing social inequality. The theory contains four basic arguments, which partly already exist and are transferred from the dimension of social equality to the political equality dimension. These theoretical assumptions rely on the counterproductive effects of social policies, different welfare regime types, unequal resource distribution and low internal efficacy. The hypotheses, dealing with one theoretical argument each, could be tested through a combination of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) database and further additional empirical extensions. This research paper fills the gap within the existing literature explaining how the welfare state can foster political inequality.