Jesper Lindqvist
About Jesper Lindqvist
My PhD dissertation tackled the question of what separates "left" from "right" in politics. The available evidence suggests that the left-right dimension is fundamentally a conflict over inequality, where right-wing individuals tend to be more accepting of inequality. In different countries, however, there are different inequalities that define the left-right scale. There are many different intergroup inequalities that can be important in a country, and this varies between contexts. For example, ethnic inequality (between an ethnic minority and an ethnic majority) is the important dividing line in some countries, while economic inequality is a more important dividing line in other settings. This shapes what citizens associate with "left" and "right" in each society, but importantly, the Left is generally less accepting of salient inequalities in all contexts.
I am currently researching why some groups get more of the policies they want compared to other groups. I am currently investigating whether the politically active, compared to the politically inactive, get more of the policies they prefer.