Charlotte Cavaille
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Georgetown University
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About Charlotte
Cavaille's research focuses on the social and political processes behind the emergence, expansion and transformation of what T.H. Marshall called “social rights.” Her dissertation examines changes in mass attitudes toward redistributive social policies in advanced capitalist economies with a focus on the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. More specifically, she studies the impact of changing individual and contextual economic conditions, policy design and elite-level framing on individual-level support for social policies, income redistribution and government intervention. Formerly, Cavaille served as Research Fellow at The Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse.
Contributions
Why Does Growing Income Inequality Matter to People and Politics?
Basic Facts Brief,
In the News
Regular contributions by Charlotte Cavaille to Inequalities: Research and Reflection from Both Sides of the Atlantic.
Publications
"Income Insecurity and the Formation of Social Policy Preferences: Evidence from Panel Data," (with ), Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, March 31, 2013.
Examines the impact of a change in material well-being on attitudes toward social policy using British panel data. Finds that in a context of a general attitudinal switch from the left to the center of the ideological spectrum, individuals experiencing material hardship are more likely to resist this trend and remain on the left.
"The Cultural Cleavage and Its Impact on Redistributive Politics," Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, March 31, 2013.
Extends the findings of the October 2012 paper listed below to most European countries, and shows that traditional left/right disagreements over egalitarian redistribution, on the one hand, correlates with proxies of material interest in the expected way. Attitude toward policies targeted to the poor and the unemployed, on the other hand, do not and are better predicted by one’s position on what is often described as the “cultural” axis of politics (e.g., authoritarian values and attitudes towards ethnic diversity and immigrants).
"Support for the Welfare State in Western Democracies: The Two Dimensions of Redistributive Attitudes," (with ), Seminar on State and Capitalism, Harvard University, September 30, 2012.
Shows that attitudes toward redistributive social policies are two-dimensional: traditional left/right disagreements over egalitarian redistribution are empirically and theoretically distinct from attitudes toward the most visibly redistributive segments of the welfare state, namely policies targeted to the poor and the unemployed. In the UK, attitudes on the latter dimension have taken a conservative turn since the late 1980's while there is no sign of a shift to the right on the former.
"The Political Consequences of Labor Market Dualization: Theory and Empirical Evidence," Inequality Proseminar, November 30, 2011.
Explores the important body of literature that has documented the emergence in European countries of a two-tiered labor market with highly protected jobs on the one hand, and highly flexible and insecure ones on the other. While some argue that this dualization of the labor market constitutes a potential new political cleavage, this paper finds no evidence in favor of such claim.