The established models predicting collective action have been developed based on liberal ideas of injustice perceptions showing that progressive collective action occurs when people perceive that the equality or need rule of fairness are violated. We argue, however, that these perceptions of injustice cannot explain the occurrence of social protests among Conservatives. The present work addresses one shortcoming in collective action research by exploring the interactive role of political ideology and injustice appraisals in predicting social protest. Specifically, we focused on injustice appraisals as a key predictor of collective action and tested whether the same or different conceptualizations of injustice instigate protest among Liberals versus Conservatives using data from two studies conducted in Germany (Study 1, N = 130) and in the US (Study 2, N = 115). Our findings indicate that injustice appraisals play an equally important role in instigating social protest both among Liberals and Conservatives. As we show, however, predicting collective action among individuals across the political spectrum requires accounting for ideological preferences for different fairness rules. Whereas Liberals are more likely to engage in protest when the equality and need rules are violated, Conservatives are more likely to protest when the merit rule is violated. We recommend that studies on collective action consider not only the strength of injustice appraisals but also their
The widely-cited definition of collective action (
In the current article, we conceive of political ideology as an interrelated set of moral and political attitudes which “organizes people’s values and beliefs and leads to political behaviour” (
The core of conservative (versus liberal) political ideology is centred on two aspects: attitudes toward social stability (versus change) and attitudes toward social hierarchy (versus equality). Both are motivated by a common set of social, cognitive and motivational factors (e.g.,
Yet, observations from the social world, such as anti-immigrant movements and ongoing resistance to taxes and government-sponsored programs indicate that Conservatives are not necessarily inactive citizens, but often actively engage in social protest (e.g.,
More generally, studies so far support the notion that both Liberals and Conservatives are likely to display similar social protest behaviours. What distinguishes them, however, are the different underlying motivations concerning the preference for social stability (versus change) and preference for social hierarchy (versus equality).
In the current paper, we propose that another crucial difference between liberal and conservative collective action stems from a different understanding of what is (un)fair among those on different sides of the political spectrum. While both Liberals and Conservatives are likely to engage in social protest, they are likely motivated by different injustice appraisals. In the following paragraphs, we present a brief overview of the main fairness principles and explain why Liberals and Conservatives consider violations of different principles as unjust. Subsequently, we link the ideological differences in fairness rule preferences to the current models of collective action.
A crucial distinction in the fairness literature has been drawn between procedural justice (e.g.,
Past correlational evidence indicates that Conservatives are more likely to allocate goods based on the merit principle, and less likely based on the equality and need principles. In contrast, Liberals are more likely to allocate goods based on the latter two principles (
In addition, Conservatives are less likely to endorse the need rule as they are more restrictive in helping, limiting their support to those who they consider not to be personally responsible for their predicament. When, in their opinion, the needy bring misfortune upon themselves, Conservatives punish them for breaching the societal rules of conduct (
According to relative deprivation theory, judgments of fairness are central to whether people respond to collective disadvantage (
In the present research, we seek to expand the existing models of collective action by empirically investigating the role of political ideology in shaping injustice appraisals and subsequent social protest. We predict that, depending on the fairness rule that is violated—equality, need or merit—individuals holding different political attitudes will perceive the outcome as (un)just and, to the extent that injustice appraisals are one of the key triggers for collective action, will be motivated accordingly to engage in protest behaviour.
The aim of the present research is to show how conceptions of fairness among Liberals and Conservatives lead to divergent perceptions of injustice that, in turn, should predict their willingness to engage in collective action. Specifically, we predicted that Conservatives will engage in collective action when the merit principle is violated (H1), whereas Liberals will engage in collective action when the equality and need rules are violated (H2). To test these predictions, we conducted two studies focusing on the allocation of two different social goods: tax money (Study 1) and healthcare (Study 2). We did not expect a difference between the violation of equality and need principles. However, given that they are two different and well-established constructs, in Study 1 we kept them separate to explore possible differences. In both studies, liberal and conservative participants were confronted with a scenario in which one of the fairness rules was violated. We were interested in the extent to which they perceive the violation of this rule as unjust, and whether they are willing to engage in collective action against the proposed changes in the allocation of the social goods. Importantly, in each study, we used the same measure of collective action intentions both for Liberals and Conservatives. In both studies, we adopted a single-dimensional definition of political ideology and analyzed it as a continuous variable (see also e.g.,
A power analysis was performed with the G*Power 3.1.9.2 statistical package. The analysis revealed that approximately 88 participants were needed to detect a medium-size effect for interaction (
In the invitation to the survey, participants were informed that the purpose of the study was to examine peoples’ beliefs about social issues and social justice. Participants answered the political ideology questions first. Next, they were randomly assigned to one of three conditions presenting a violation of the merit, need, or equality allocation principles. Following the manipulation, they were shown two attention check questions and were asked to answer a series of questions measuring perceived injustice and collective action intentions.
We used a single-item measure to assess political ideology (1 =
Fairness manipulation consisted of two parts. In the first part, participants were presented with an article, published allegedly in an online edition of a major German business newspaper “Wirtschaftswoche”, announcing that the tax reform in Germany is inevitable, and providing a brief description of the proposed changes (that would apply to income, real estate, and welfare tax; see
[Merit rule] “In a fair social system, goods are allocated to people based on the contributions they have made to society. People who have contributed more, either by working harder, being more productive or having higher skills, should be given more in return. Similarly, people who have been lazy or unproductive should be given less or nothing.”
[Equality rule] “In a fair social system, goods are distributed equally among all people. Regardless of how large the contribution of each person is, everyone should get equal benefits from the available tax money. No one should be treated worse.“
[Need rule] “In a fair social system, goods are allocated to people based on their social needs. Those who are in need the most should be given priority. Fairness is achieved when people with the greatest needs are given attention first.”
To ensure that participants read the text thoroughly, following the manipulation they were asked to indicate whether the politician was for or against the proposed changes (all participants provided the correct answer) and to summarize the purported consequences of the reform, according to the politician (open-ended question).
All items were rated on a 1 (
In both studies, we also measured threat perceptions, national identity, group efficacy, and radical collective action intentions, for exploratory purposes. Interested readers can obtain detailed results from the first author. At the end of the survey, we additionally asked respondents to what degree each of the three allocation principles aligned most closely with their definition of social fairnessii. Conservative ideology was linked to higher preference for the merit-rule,
As expected, we did not find any differences in a violation of need vs. a violation of equality comparison for Liberals, nor for Conservatives. Thus, in the following analyses, we collapsed these two conditions into one category and, subsequently, compared it with the violation of merit condition (in all analyses the fairness rule was coded as 1 =
Variable | 2 | 3 | 4 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Political ideology | 5.09 | 1.16 | -.09 | .13 | .09 |
2. Injustice | 4.02 | 1.53 | – | .58** | .31** |
3. Collective action intentions | 2.81 | 1.56 | – | .25** | |
4. Violation of merit (1) vs. violation of need/equality (2) | – | – | – |
**
For perceived injustice and collective action intentions, we ran a regression analysis with political ideology, the manipulated fairness rule (Step 1), and the interaction of both (Step 2) as independent variables using PROCESS macro (Model 1;
Analysis indicated no significant main effect of political ideology,
As indicated by Johnson-Neyman’s significance regions (see
We found a corresponding pattern of results for collective action intentions. Analysis revealed no significant main effect of political ideology,
Again, values of political ideology defining Johnson-Neyman’s significance regions (see
Finally, to test the effect of the fairness manipulation on collective action intentions via perceived injustice, conditional upon political ideology, we performed a moderated mediation analysis with the use of the PROCESS macro (Model 8;
Study 1 provided initial support for our hypotheses. Importantly, liberal and conservative participants alike considered the proposed reform as unjust and were willing to protest the proposed changes taking the same actions, which ranged from signing an online petition to participating in a demonstration or a rally (political ideology was not related to support for any of the specific actions). This supports the notion that individuals across the political spectrum are likely to perceive injustice and engage in the same type of normative actions. However, they differ in their underlying motivations.
To ascertain whether we can replicate these effects in a different (particularly, non-student) sample, and with a different social good (healthcare instead of taxes), we designed Study 2. Moreover, the manipulation in Study 1 referred to an alleged, not a real tax reform. Thus, in Study 2, we aimed to refer to a social good that was subject to a current political debate.
The context for Study 2 was the ongoing discussion around the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) in the United States. Although the act itself has been signed by the US president in March 2010, five years in, it would still stir up the political debate at the time when we collected data for the study (March 2015). The health reform bill clearly divided American society: as of March 2015, two in five (41%) surveyed adults had a generally favourable opinion about it, while a corresponding number (43%) held an unfavourable opinion (
Power analysis revealed that approximately 88 participants were needed to detect a medium-size effect for interaction (
The majority of the sample had healthcare coverage (81%; 40% employer-sponsored, 14% private, 13% government-sponsored, 11% insured by a family member, 2% other); 55% had an annual household income below $50,000, 24% between $50,000 and $75,000, 21% above $75,000. On average, participants evaluated their relative socioeconomic status (SES) close to the SES of an average person in American society (
The procedure was like in Study 1. Participants answered political ideology questions first. Next, they were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: presenting a violation of the merit (
Political ideology was measured with three items tapping into general political ideology (1 =
In both conditions, the first part of the manipulation text read: “Until recently the health care system in the US was mostly based on private or employer-sponsored insurance. Only some people were eligible for public insurance like Medicaid or Medicare.” Following this introductory line, in the violation of merit rule condition participants read: “Imagine that the US Congress put a stop to all private and employer-sponsored insurance by introducing universal, public healthcare. Access to healthcare would no longer be granted based on merit and individual contributions (e.g., no one would be allowed to get special treatment even at additional cost), but care would be equal for all citizens.” In the violation of need rule condition participants read: “Imagine that the US Congress put a stop to all public social insurance programs for the needy (such as Medicare or Medicaid), by retaining only employer-sponsored and private insurance. Access to healthcare would no longer be granted based on needs – to have health coverage, everyone, no matter what age and financial standing, would have to obtain it individually.”
To ensure that participants read the entire manipulation text, following the manipulation they were asked (in an open-ended question) to elaborate on the content of the US Congress amendment proposal they read.
As in Study 1, at the end of the survey, we additionally asked respondents to what degree each of the allocation principles aligned most closely with their definition of social fairness. Conservative political ideology was linked to higher preference for the merit-rule,
We employed the same analytical approach as in Study 1.
Variable | 2 | 3 | 4 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Political ideology | 4.50 | 1.48 | -.02 | .06 | -.10 |
2. Injustice | 3.99 | 1.94 | – | .82** | .49** |
3. Collective action intentions | 3.12 | 1.98 | – | .36** | |
4. Violation of merit (1) vs. violation of need (2) | – | – | – |
**
Next, for each dependent variable, we ran a regression analysis with political ideology, the manipulated fairness rule (coded as 1 =
Analysis indicated no main effect of political ideology,
As defined by Johnson-Neyman’s significance regions (see
Replicating results of Study 1, we found no main effect of political ideology,
Finally, as in Study 1, we tested whether the interactive effect of the fairness manipulation and political ideology on collective action intentions could be explained by perceived injustice. The indirect effect of manipulation (coded as 1 =
Our studies underscore the importance of accounting not only for the strength of injustice appraisals but also for different conceptions of fairness in predicting collective action among individuals across the political spectrum. In two experiments, we show that different notions of what is fair among Conservatives and Liberals lead to varying perceptions of injustice and readiness to protest it. Specifically, Conservatives consider the violation of the merit rule (versus the need and equality rules) as more unfair and are more willing to engage in collective action upon it. In contrast, Liberals consider the violations of the need and equality rules (versus the need rule) as more unfair and are more willing to engage in collective action upon them. We show these effects in samples from two different cultural contexts (Germany and the US), and for two different social goods (tax money and healthcare). Our research is thus an important step towards a fuller understanding of different motivations to engage in collective action among Conservatives and Liberals.
In both studies we used established measures of political ideology (
Why is this finding meaningful and important? Although the central focus of liberal protest in the prior literature suggests that Conservatives are less interested in protest, our data shows that there is no difference in the overall willingness to protest in terms of readiness to engage in collective action among Liberals and Conservatives. One of the reasons for the apparent absence of Conservatives in protest is likely due to the operationalization of injustice perceptions as violating the equality and the need principle of fairness (e.g.,
Our studies show that Liberals and Conservatives were equally interested in collective action against tax reform in Study 1 and against changes in the healthcare system in Study 2. However, observers of protests need to take into account that the same behaviour (a protest against changes in the tax reform or healthcare system) can have completely different underlying motivations depending on different notions of (in)justice. For this reason, we recommend that studies on collective action consider not only measures of the
Our research also contributes to a wider debate on the role of ideology and personal variables in predicting social protest. Previous studies have shown that willingness to engage in collective action depends on other ideological variables, such as group-based opinions (
Regarding social policy, our results show that messages and policies based on moral claims referring to social justice always come with a caveat: definitions of fairness differ depending on who the audience is. What Liberals consider as fair, Conservatives evaluate as unfair and vice versa. This can have significant consequences for how people evaluate social policies and whether they follow them or engage in social protest.
Moreover, our results add to the recent literature by showing that not all social protests lead to a reduction of social inequalities (e.g.,
We acknowledge some limitations of the present work. In both studies, the means for injustice perceptions and collective action items were somehow low (i.e., below the mid-point of the response scale). This is not unusual in studies on collective action, given that traditional forms of collective action (e.g., demonstrations) are rare in real life (
Future studies could examine potential differences in the preferred ways in which Liberals and Conservatives express protest. To our knowledge, this idea has not been investigated yet. Although we did not observe significant differences between Liberals and Conservatives in their willingness to instigate any of the behaviours included in our studies, further exploration of actions taken by Liberals and Conservatives could shed light on collective action more broadly.
Another possible limitation of our studies concerns the cultural contexts in which we measured political ideology. Both our samples were collected in Western countries in which social and economic conservatism are correlated positively for historical reasons (
Although the inclusion of the merit rule of fairness contributes to the understanding of collective action among Conservatives, by no means can it account for all occurrences of conservative collective action. In cases such as pro-life protests or social movements aimed at defending the traditional family values, other psychological variables, such as moral convictions, can be expected to play a more prominent role (
Finally, although our studies speak to the importance of differentiating between various notions of fairness in predicting collective action, we focused only on the three main normative rules of distributive fairness. In future studies, it would be interesting to investigate the importance of different allocation principles against the importance Conservatives typically attribute to the preservation of the status quo, group coherence, and social status. For example, how would Conservatives react if they were faced with a merit-based rule of fairness that threatened their status, such as preferential policies for high-skilled immigrants? (cf.
The present work addresses one shortcoming in collective action research by exploring the interactive role of political ideology and injustice appraisals in predicting social protest. We argued that the established models predicting collective action have been developed based on liberal ideas of injustice showing that progressive collective action occurs when people perceive that the equality or need rule of fairness are violated. We demonstrated, however, that these perceptions of injustice cannot explain the occurrence of conservative social protests, because Conservatives were interested in protest when the merit rule of fairness was violated. Thus, this research takes one step forward and contributes to the recent literature highlighting the important role of ideology in collective action research.
Tax Reform in Germany
OECD: Germany needs tax reform!
The current state of the German economy provides an opportunity for sustainable development. According to OECD a tax reform is necessary to facilitate growth. Particularly, changes in income, real estate, and welfare taxes are needed. A “Wirtschaftswoche” expert, Andreas Toller, says the reform recommended by OECD will affect all Germans. [Read more…]
Please read the following opinion of a Bundestag Finance Committee Member that was voiced last week during a meeting devoted to the introduction of the OECD’s guidelines.
“I’m really concerned about the OECD intervention in our national economy. I believe that the majority will agree that the fiscal changes proposed by the OECD do not restore, but threaten social justice in our country.”
[Fairness rule manipulation]
“Germany was built on these values. That is why we cannot allow the OECD to introduce reforms that threaten these values or are at odds with them. We need to take immediate action to restore social justice in Germany.”
The authors have no funding to report.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
The authors have no support to report.
Given that the distributed good was taxes, in addition to political ideology, we also measured economic conservatism (1 =
Instructions read: “Below you can see three statements that provide different definitions of „social fairness”. Please indicate how strongly you agree with each of them: 1. In a fair society resources (e.g., goods and money) should be allocated to people on the basis of their needs; those who are in need the most should be given priority. 2. In a fair society resources (e.g., goods and money) should be distributed equally among all people; everyone should have equal access to them. 3. In a fair society resources (e.g., goods and money) should be allocated based on the contributions people have made to the society; people who have worked harder, are more productive or talented, should be given more in return.”
We computed separate analyses for political ideology measured with a single item tapping into overall political ideology. The pattern of results was like that for the composite measure. In addition, we measured conservatism operationalized as Right-Wing Authoritarianism (18 items;
As in Study 1, we also measured perceived threat referring to consequences of the health reform (five items). Additionally, we measured group-based anger (two items). The pattern of results was like results for perceived injustice, thus we did not report them in the manuscript. In addition, we measured participant’s household income, current healthcare coverage (employer-sponsored/ private/government-sponsored/ I’m insured by a family member/none/other) and relative socio-economic status. Analyses showed similar results regardless of whether these variables were included as covariates or not, which is why we decided not to include them in the analyses presented in the manuscript. Interested readers can obtain the results from the first author.