The Economic Foundations of Social Identity and Political Fragmentation
Name of applicant
Amalie Sofie Jensen
Title
Associate Professor
Institution
University of Copenhagen
Amount
DKK 6,149,636
Year
2025
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accelerate
What?
Political polarization and the erosion of democratic institutions are among the most pressing problems societies face today. Scholars have focused on the polarizing nature of identity politics to explain political resentment. We argue that identity politics plausibly has economic roots if one considers structures of inequality that operate both across and within groups.
Why?
Observation of current politics in the US and other rich democracies suggest the fever-pitched nature of identity politics and the damaging consequences that political polarization can have on political systems. Understanding the economic foundations of polarized societies will give us access to redistributive policy tools that can break new ground in terms of both theory and societal impact.
How?
We decompose inequality in, e.g., income and wealth into between and within group differences. We examine how these structures of inequality shape group attachments and perceptions of group differences, and how this ultimately affects political outcomes and polarization. We refine economic models of social identity and use large-scale survey experiments linked to Danish administrative records.