Current Projects
Moral Economy of Meritocracy and Redistributive Preferences (co-investigator, with J. C. Castillo and J. Atria). Grant: National Fund for Sciences and Technology (CONICYT/FONDECYT), 2016-2020, Chile.
Meritocracy refers to a social order where merit is a central criterion to assign resources. Descriptive studies reveal a high acceptance of merit as a just principle of distribution and redistribution among citizens. However, several important gaps still persist in the literature for understanding current social dynamics in western societies. To the best of our own knowledge, there has been modest literature on the meanings of meritocracy in terms of public opinion. Some studies present evidence about the association between individual characteristics and beliefs about meritocracy, but research about the roles of social and institutional contexts on this association is also scarce. Furthermore, no study on the impact of meritocracy on redistributive preferences has ever appeared in sociology’s leading journals.
The project “Moral Economy of Meritocracy and Redistributive Preferences” attempts to fill in some of these gaps by examining the association between both concepts and, in doing so, contribute to the understanding of the role of meritocracy in currents societies. Following a theoretical framework based on the notion of moral economy, we propose a case study of Chile by using a mixed longitudinal and cross-national comparison perspective. Chile is a particularly interesting case because it represents a bellwether of liberal policy reforms in Latin America. At the same time, during the 2000s, new left governments adopted major initiatives towards a social-right based social policy. This kind of institutional mixture offers a unique opportunity to study the interactions between institutional change and beliefs. The research design of the project consists in three phases. First, “Theory, Meanings, and Practices of Meritocracy”, which consists in a set of qualitative studies of meritocratic cases in Chilean society. The second phase, “Context, Merit, and Redistributive Preferences”, is composed by cross-national multilevel studies that will use ISSP (International Social Survey Programme) and LAPOP (Latin American Public Opinion Project) data to evaluate the relationship between meritocracy, redistributive preferences and institutional contexts. Finally, on the basis of the results of the two previous studies, the third step will analyze in deep the relationship between meritocracy and preferences. “Measurement and Social Consequences of Meritocracy in Chile” and includes the application of a micro level panel survey of the Chilean population that will help to test the validity of constructs and the identification of causality in the relationship between meritocracy and redistributive preferences by using observational and experimental designs.
Moral Economy of Meritocracy and Redistributive Preferences (co-investigator, with J. C. Castillo and J. Atria). Grant: National Fund for Sciences and Technology (CONICYT/FONDECYT), 2016-2020, Chile.
Meritocracy refers to a social order where merit is a central criterion to assign resources. Descriptive studies reveal a high acceptance of merit as a just principle of distribution and redistribution among citizens. However, several important gaps still persist in the literature for understanding current social dynamics in western societies. To the best of our own knowledge, there has been modest literature on the meanings of meritocracy in terms of public opinion. Some studies present evidence about the association between individual characteristics and beliefs about meritocracy, but research about the roles of social and institutional contexts on this association is also scarce. Furthermore, no study on the impact of meritocracy on redistributive preferences has ever appeared in sociology’s leading journals.
The project “Moral Economy of Meritocracy and Redistributive Preferences” attempts to fill in some of these gaps by examining the association between both concepts and, in doing so, contribute to the understanding of the role of meritocracy in currents societies. Following a theoretical framework based on the notion of moral economy, we propose a case study of Chile by using a mixed longitudinal and cross-national comparison perspective. Chile is a particularly interesting case because it represents a bellwether of liberal policy reforms in Latin America. At the same time, during the 2000s, new left governments adopted major initiatives towards a social-right based social policy. This kind of institutional mixture offers a unique opportunity to study the interactions between institutional change and beliefs. The research design of the project consists in three phases. First, “Theory, Meanings, and Practices of Meritocracy”, which consists in a set of qualitative studies of meritocratic cases in Chilean society. The second phase, “Context, Merit, and Redistributive Preferences”, is composed by cross-national multilevel studies that will use ISSP (International Social Survey Programme) and LAPOP (Latin American Public Opinion Project) data to evaluate the relationship between meritocracy, redistributive preferences and institutional contexts. Finally, on the basis of the results of the two previous studies, the third step will analyze in deep the relationship between meritocracy and preferences. “Measurement and Social Consequences of Meritocracy in Chile” and includes the application of a micro level panel survey of the Chilean population that will help to test the validity of constructs and the identification of causality in the relationship between meritocracy and redistributive preferences by using observational and experimental designs.
