Research Programme

The overwhelming interest in the book Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty in the autumn of 2014 immediately brought the topic of social inequality back on the political and social agenda. The analysis by the French economist, regardless of how people may view it, has clearly revived the broader discussion about differences between rich and poor and social exclusion. Though uncontested, Piketty’s main argument in his book that inequality of wealth has increased significantly again since the 1980s (in 2012 the wealthiest 10 percent of the Dutch population possesed no less than 61 percent of the total capital) is not the whole story. After all, some mechanisms and forces restrict or reverse inequality.

The welfare state, introduced after the Second World War in many European countries, North America, Japan, and the Pacific region, is one such system and arises from concern about the substandard living working conditions (the ‘social issue’), which arose at the end of the 19th century. This has been countered by the neo-liberal course that many governments chose to pursue in the 1980s, giving multinationals free reign and sharply reducing taxes on corporate income. Remarkably, little or no collective action has been forthcoming from the population affected.

The importance of political decisions, which arise in turn from collective actions by those affected, is illustrated by the vast differences within the West. In the welfare states in Scandinavia, Western Europe, and Japan, social policy ensures extensive reallocation of income and capital, whereas in countries such as the United States, market forces are far more prevalent, and inequality is therefore much greater.

Reallocation is by no means unique to the ‘West.’ Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Cambodia, North Korea, and Cuba have applied this practice as well. Here, however, their centralistic, undemocratic equalizing has seriously curtailed individual freedom, and this ‘social engineering’ claimed millions of lives. Other countries restrict the reallocation to their ‘own’ citizens, excluding millions of migrants and subjecting them to extreme exploitation, as happens in the oil states in the Middle East and in countries such as Malaysia. Finally, plenty of countries within the Western sphere of influence have in the recent past taken little notice of democracy and freedom of the press and have consciously perpetuated all kinds of inequality. Examples include Spain under Franco, the regime of the colonels in Greece, and several authoritarian regimes in Latin America.

The switch to a neoliberal course in the 1980s, the disappearance of the Iron Curtain, and the introduction of a market economy in China have led social inequality within countries all over the world to increase once again. Some inequality is inevitable and beneficial for human societies. When the differences between rich and poor become excessive, however, the ‘damage to society’ may be considerable: inequality reduces trust in the government and impacts democracy and social cohesion in the process.

The growing power of the very rich (especially in the United States) to set up successful lobbies and invest unlimited amounts of money to sway public opinion and manipulate voting practices may be a far greater threat to democracy. Serious social inequality moreover often leads to rising crime rates and lack of safety, as the alarmingly high murder rates in Central America, South Africa, and Brazil demonstrate.

Besides an obvious correlation with structural poverty and inequality, gun ownership is a factor in high murder rates, as is clear in the United States, where the murder rates are quintuple those in Northwest Europe.

Working conditions in those countries are at times so substandard that some refer to new (debt) slavery, a pattern that presently affects about 36 million people, especially in India, Pakistan, much of sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, North Korea, Russia, and China.

Finally, there is still much to improve for girls and women. While gender inequality has declined considerably over the past half century, women are still ordinarily at a disadvantage and treated as second-class citizens in many parts of the world. They continue to be paid less for their work than men performing the same work, have fewer opportunities for career advancement, and work longer hours.

Historically, the position of women has been closely linked to their place and function within the immediate or enlarged household. Only recently has gender-specific remuneration for work started to change, thanks to growing economic individualization.

Although the West is heaven on earth from a global perspective, inequality is rising there as well. This manifests primarily in the flexibilizing labour market, where the share of self-employed has grown significantly since the end of the previous century. Although some of them earn good incomes, many find self-employment less glamorous and are underinsured and accrue little or no pension, and often they manage only if their spouse has a permanent job. Most seem to start their own businesses as a short-term strategy. In addition, growing numbers hold two – poorly paid – jobs: they are also known as ‘working poor.’

These trends suggest increasing ‘precarization’  and ‘fissuring’ of the labour market, where terms of employment are being eroded for ever more workers, pension accrual is stagnating, and wages are falling behind, impacting the wellbeing and social opportunities of these flex workers in all kinds of ways. Historical research by the IISH reveals that in the long run collective strategies are always better and enhance subsistence security.

The widening gap between rich and poor in North America and Western Europe not only deepens social-economic divisions but also widens the cultural gap between population groups. This trend has been in progress for a while and first became noticeable in the 1990s, when it manifested inter alia in the appeal of populist (anti-immigration) parties among those with little schooling. While many of the well-educated touted the economic and cultural benefits of globalization, the rapidly changing world filled others with growing discomfort and insecurity.

These two groups drifted further apart, because the well-educated and those with little schooling married increasingly within their own circle (‘homogamy’), causing social mingling to decline. This further reduced opportunities for social advancement and strengthened the cultural barrier between an upper crust that embraced globalization and a conservative, more nationalist, and in some case more xenophobic undercurrent.

The IISH research programme about global changes in work and labour relations over the past five centuries is the perfect context for situating the current issues briefly mentioned above in a historical and global perspective. Central questions are which mechanisms underlie the current rise in social inequality and flexibilization of the labour market and the conditions (in declining order) that enable a worthy subsistence for workers. In slightly different words, why have the balance of power at the workplace and the proceeds of work (both material and immaterial) varied so much in different parts of the world over the centuries?

We try to answer these questions by gathering and analysing data as systematically as possible about work, working conditions, and labour relations in the Collaboratory (an online interactive research setting) about global labour relations from 1500, as well as by turning to the Clio-Infra project about economic growth, health, population growth, gender, biodiversity, education, violence, and democracy.

We also use the many (international) archives about social movements at the IISH premises. After all, these groups have done much to fight social inequality and strengthen the position of workers.

Based on the data presently available, several important conclusions may be reached. First, as was disclosed in the report How was life? about ‘Global Well-Being,’ which the IISH and Utrecht University  (CLIO-Infra) issued jointly with the OECD in September 2014, mankind has never before been as wealthy, as well-educated, and as healthy as now.

Inequality between men and women (the ‘gender gap’) has also declined considerably. The trend since 1820 reveals, however, that this progress has been far from even, and that substantial differences exist between countries and continents. The account also makes clear that economic growth often affects the environment and biodiversity.

The time series assembled in How was life? raises countless new questions as to the nature of and the causes underlying these changes and about how these global differences may be explained. One way to understand the determinants of social inequality is to examine the shifts in labour relations (from slavery to free wage labour) over time and to gain insight into how ordinary people may influence it.

We have distinguished individual from collective strategies. Individual strategies are about how people, whether as individuals or as part of a family or household, respond to overly unequal labour relations. Such responses may range from silent protest and sabotage (‘weapons of the weak’) to starting their own business and thus ‘voting with their feet’ or basically leaving for something better.

Migrations nearly always serve to find a better life, whether the migrants are slaves fleeing plantations, Indian and Chinese farm workers moving to the city, African youths coming to Southern Europe as illegal aliens in search of work, or Europeans hoping to make a new life elsewhere in the world. While some may find the working conditions at their destination every bit as bad as they were at home, this does not change the aspirations and hopes that underlie their decision to leave.

The scope of the IISH research extends beyond ‘the poor, the tired, and the hungry.’ To provide satisfactory and adequate answers to the main research questions, we need to consider the well-educated, employers, and successful businessmen as well. This matters, not only because they are often responsible for unequal labour relations, but also because they are mirror images of those less fortunate, and moreover because their individual (consider expats as well-educated migrants) and collective strategies figure within the broad spectrum of work and labour relations.

Aside from their individual strategies, people throughout the world have tried in all kinds of ways to join forces and protect their interests. These measures range from setting up urban guilds, accepting work as a group, forming cooperatives and communes (as runaway slaves have done) to establishing trade unions and other, civil society organizations, such as Greenpeace, Amnesty, Doctors Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch, as well as political parties.

Such initiatives are successful to varying degrees, and the IISH research has revealed interesting patterns and mechanisms that tell us a lot about the circumstances in which collective actions (from local to transnational) may be conducive to eliminating social inequality.

One important observation is that the ‘West’ does not have a monopoly on collective actions, and that even in societies that provide or provided few opportunities for public protests and resistance, people have sought creative solutions to improve their plight and are rarely merely victims.

This aspect of ‘agency’ is pivotal in all IISH research, and the vast archive and library collections of the Institute contain a wealth of information that has yet to be fully explored, and of which part has been supplemented by new information.

The research perspectives described briefly above demonstrate that excessive social inequality is not inevitable, and that current and future developments are heavily dependent on the nature of economic growth and the extent to which people have and create opportunities to protect their interests individually or collectively. We are aware that the manifestations of collective actions against substandard living and working conditions in Africa and Asia – as well as in centrally-governed countries such as China – often differ considerably from those in Europe and North America and consequently do not come into view. IISH researchers therefore work closely with fellow researchers in other parts of the world.

In the years ahead the IISH research department shall, with support from several global partnerships with researchers on all continents, continue systematically gathering and analyzing data about social (life courses, labour relations, survival strategies including migration, and collective actions) and economic (wages, prices, productivity) developments in the world since 1500.

From the perspective of work and labour relations, this research may contribute significantly to answering the central question as to why balances of power at the workplace and the proceeds of work may vary so greatly, depending on the time and place. Such a perspective is essential for gaining insight into the conditions that foster and perpetuate inequality.

Through these efforts, the Institute hopes to contribute to current social debates about social inequality, economic growth, environments, globalization, migration, and democracy.

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