The Institutional Foundations of Inequality in Modern Society

Abstract

Inequality has again become one of the most urgent and difficult problems in modern societies. Economic inequality, and inequality in other social dimensions, has shown a tendency to grow in developed and developing countries. In the social sciences, studies of inequality have a long history. In many explanatory schemata, priority is given to social and political institutions. Whereas in the mid 20th century institutions were routinely qualified as objective, naturally evolving systems of norms, serving to ensure the cohesion of social practices, further studies referring to complex societies emphasized that institutions are a product of the relationship between the power elite and civil society. When civil society and its organizations grow weaker and when society loses its “subjectivity”, the power elites strengthen their hold and manipulate norms to their benefit. The achieved consensus of conformity breaks down as soon as society ceases to be industrial and loses the dominance of routines and bureaucracy in social life. In increasingly complex societies, public demand for egalitarian policy is growing, presuming not only equality in legislation, but also social equality embodied in the idea of a developed welfare state.