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‘Legal empowerment’ is defined as a process of systemic change through which the poor and excluded become able to use the law to protect and advance their rights and interests as citizens and economic actors. Since the 2000s, legal empowerment initiatives have established a widely recognized record...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Legal Empowerment and Group-Based Inequality
The articles in the forthcoming special issue are already available online on full open access. The special issue will be officially published in March 2019, vol. 55, issue 3. Legal empowerment has become widely accepted in development policy circles as an approach to addressing poverty and...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Horizontal Inequality: Persistence and Change
Working Paper
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This paper brings labour back into the literature on legal empowerment against poverty. Employing a historical lens, I outline three waves of legal movements. Each wave is distinguished by its timing, the state-level target, and the actors involved. In all three waves, legal empowerment was won, not...
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– Status inequality and vote choice in the Indian states
What explains the popularity of right-wing parties amongst the poor? This paper argues that in hierarchical societies with high social-status inequality, poor high-status voters may ally with rich high-status voters if they believe their social-status is under threat. I demonstrate this in the...
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– The case of Vietnam
This paper examines the issue of horizontal inequalities in Vietnam over the past 20 years. Using data from three recent Vietnam population censuses (1989, 1999, and 2009) and three Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys (1998, 2008, 2012), we estimated numerous measures on inequalities between...
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– Evidence from Brazilian politicians
What explains the persistence of racial or ethnic inequalities in political representation, in the absence of strongly politicized racial or ethnic cleavages? This paper uses new data to demonstrate a substantial racial gap between voters and politicians in Brazil. We show that this disparity is not...
Working Paper
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Using data from various rounds of the nationally representative NSSO survey between 1988 and 2012, we first construct national, state, and district-level figures for overall, within and between consumption inequality. We find an increase in inequality in India but only since 2004. We also document...
Social structures undergo transformation with the transition to a market economy. This collection examines the role of inequality in the formation of economic elites and middle classes, as well as in the rise of poverty in transitional societies. Based on comparative analysis of social...
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The transition to a market economy in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) has been associated with greater inequality and social stratification. Living standards have fallen for the majority of people, unemployment and poverty are high, the distribution of assets and earnings has...
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– The Case of Kyrgyzstan 1993-97
The transition from plan to market has fundamentally transformed the social structure in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. The small Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan exemplifies these changes.Using data from nationally representative living standards measurement surveys in...
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– A Case Study of Social Stratification
Kyrgyzstan is one of the poorer countries undergoing transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. Unlike its neighbour Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan followed a rather radical reform strategy, introduced liberal macroeconomic reforms and large-scale privatization. Having laid major foundations...
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The paper finds that a new system of social stratification is emerging in rural China in the wake of economic reforms, one that is far less equal than what preceded it. As part of this trend, wealth inequality has increased markedly in a short period of time. A relatively equal distribution of land...
Displaying 14 of 14 results