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The emergence of bureaucracy is often described as occurring at a particular historical period in a society, as a result of the pressures of war, the improvement of communication and transportation technologies, or societywide cultural changes. But recently many scholars have drawn attention to examples of meritocratic bureaucracies in societies otherwise organized according to patrimonial logics, what I call proto-bureaucracies. In this article I investigate one aspect of proto-bureaucracies that has not been examined in the literature: in a society characterized by patrimonial relations, the sudden introduction of meritocratic principles of recruitment may be interpreted as violating the principles of rewarding loyalty or kinship. This can fragment the political coalitions necessary to sustain a proto-bureaucracy. I argue through in-depth examination of one case, and secondary analysis of several others, that to manage the problem of exclusion successful proto-bureaucracies enact performative adherence to nonmeritocratic logics while protecting their meritocratic core. I argue that understanding contemporary proto-bureaucracies can help to develop an organizational strategy for strengthening governance and reducing corruption. The main lesson of proto-bureaucracies is that effective institutions generate exclusion, but meritocratic practices can be sustained if the exclusions they generate can be addressed in other ways.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Monica Prasad: Department of Sociology and Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University
E-mail: m-prasad@northwestern.edu

Acknowledgments: For comments on earlier versions of this article I am grateful to Sam Cohn, Erin McDonnell, Michael Roll, audience members at the American Sociological Virtual Engagement Event of 2020, and especially Dinsha Mistree, whose fascinating dissertation inspired this research and who has been an enthusiastic supporter throughout the project. I am also particularly grateful to the two faculty members at the new IIT who hosted me and facilitated my research.

Citation: Prasad, Monica. 2022. “Proto-Bureaucracies.” Sociological Science 9: 374-405.
Received: May 30, 2022
Accepted: July 12, 2022
Editors: Ari Adut, Gabriel Rossman
DOI: 10.15195/v9.a15

Pathways to Skin Color Stratification: The Role of Inherited (Dis)Advantage and Skin Color Discrimination in Labor Markets

By Parker Webservices on August 29, 2022 in Articles

Maria Abascal, Denia Garcia

Sociological Science August 29, 2022
10.15195/v9.a14

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Research has uncovered associations between skin color and myriad outcomes. What drives these associations? We develop a theoretical framework that synthesizes the multiple pathways linking skin color with life chances. Skin color stratification should be conceptualized in historical, structural terms: as the result of unequal treatment and inherited (dis)advantage, that is, unequal resources transmitted by families with different skin tones. We assess the role of two pathways— discrimination and inherited (dis)advantage—for Blacks’ and Latinos’ employment, earnings, and occupational prestige. We use the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, which includes a visual skin color measure; multiple indicators of family background; and a sibling subsample that allows us, using fixed-effects models, to recover the effect of skin color net of family background. First, we find that darker skin tone is associated with worse labor market outcomes. Indicators of family background account for 29 to 44 percent of skin color’s associations with employment, earnings, and occupational prestige. Second, using sibling fixed-effects models, we find that darker skin tone is associated with worse labor market outcomes, but these associations are not statistically significant. In sum, our findings suggest that we pay attention to the multiple pathways linking skin color with life chances.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Maria Abascal: Department of Sociology, New York University
E-mail: m.abascal@nyu.edu

Denia Garcia: La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin–Madison
E-mail: dgarcia28@wisc.edu

Acknowledgments: We thank Siyeona Chang for invaluable research assistance. We are grateful to Jason Fletcher, Mike Hout, Patricia McManus, Rourke O’Brien, Edward Telles, and members of the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society workshop at Indiana University, Bloomington for their feedback. Both authors contributed equally to this work. Direct correspondence to Maria Abascal, 295 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10027, m.abascal@nyu.edu, and Denia Garcia, 1225 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706, dgarcia28@wisc.edu.

Citation: Abascal, Maria, and Denia Garcia. 2022. “Pathways to Skin Color Stratification: The Role of Inherited (Dis)Advantage and Skin Color Discrimination in Labor Markets.” Sociological Science 9: 346-373.
Received: May 31, 2022
Accepted: July 13, 2022
Editors: Ari Adut, Filiz Garip
DOI: 10.15195/v9.a14

Becoming an Ideologue: Social Sorting and the Microfoundations of Polarization

By Parker Webservices on August 1, 2022 in Articles

Craig M. Rawlings

Sociological Science August 1, 2022
10.15195/v9.a13

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This article elaborates and tests the hypothesis that the sociopolitical segregation of interpersonal networks (i.e., social sorting) is at the root of recent polarization trends in the United States. After reviewing recent trends, the article outlines the micro-level pathways through which social sorting along sociopolitical lines leads individuals to become more ideological in their identities and attitude structures. It then tests these pathways using panel data from the General Social Survey, which includes detailed measures of individuals’ social ties, ideological identification, and attitudes across a wide array of issues. Results show two dominant pathways through which more socially sorted individuals become more ideological: a short pathway directly linking social sorting to more extreme ideological identities, and a longer pathway linking social sorting to more extreme ideological identities through an increasingly ideological alignment of individuals’ attitude structures. The shorter pathway predominates among conservatives and the longer pathway among liberals. These micro-level pathways are shown to generalize to different macro-level polarization trends in identities and attitude structures for conservatives and liberals. Findings therefore uphold core sociological principles while providing stronger social-structural foundations for a growing body of mainly psychological research on ideological asymmetries.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Craig M. Rawlings: Department of Sociology, Duke University
E-mail: craig.rawlings@duke.edu

Acknowledgments: For helpful comments on earlier drafts, I thank Chris Bail and Clayton Childress. I am grateful for insights provided by several members of Duke University’s Worldview Lab, including Christopher Johnston, Nicholas Restrepo Ochoa, and Steve Vaisey. For useful comments at a conceptual stage of this work, which was presented at the 2019 Network Ecology mini-conference at Stanford University, I thank Delia Baldassarri, Amir Goldberg, John Levi Martin, and Dan McFarland. Any errors or omissions are my own. Address correspondence to Craig M. Rawlings, Dept. of Sociology, Duke University, 270 Reuben-Cooke, 417 Chapel Dr., Durham, NC 27708.

Citation: Rawlings, Craig M. 2022. “Becoming an Ideologue: Social Sorting and the Microfoundations of Polarization.” Sociological Science 9: 313-345.
Received: March 13, 2022
Accepted: June 7, 2022
Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Gabriel Rossman
DOI: 10.15195/v9.a13

Black Protests in the United States, 1994 to 2010

By Parker Webservices on May 30, 2022 in Articles

Pamela Oliver, Chaeyoon Lim, Morgan C. Matthews, Alex Hanna

Sociological Science May 30, 2022
10.15195/v9.a12

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Using novel data, we provide the first panoramic view of U.S. Black movement protest events as reported in U.S. newswires between 1994 and 2010 and put our quantitative data into dialogue with qualitative accounts. Struggles during these years presaged the Black Lives protest waves of 2014 to 2016 and 2020. Protests increased after the 1995 Million Man March into 2001 but dropped abruptly after the 9/11 attacks. Collective action increased again at the end of the 2000s. Protests in response to police violence and other criminal-legal issues were major arenas of struggle and news coverage. Also common were issues of national identity including celebrations of Black history and Black solidarity, protests about Confederate symbols, and protests about White hate groups and hate crimes. Although Black people protested about a wide variety of issues, newswires focused disproportionately on incidents of police violence and perceived threats of Black violence. There is substantial continuity in issues, organizations, and activism between this earlier period and the Black Lives Movement of 2014 to 2020.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Pamela Oliver: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
E-mail: Pamela.Oliver@wisc.edu
ORCID: 0000-0001-7643-1008

Chaeyoon Lim: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
E-mail: chaeyoon.lim@wisc.edu
ORCID: 0000-0003-4527-4390

Morgan C. Matthews: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison
E-mail: mmatthews5@wisc.edu
ORCID: 0000-0003-2721-1572

Alex Hanna: DAIR Institute
E-mail: alex.hanna@gmail.com
ORCID: 0000-0002-8957-0813

Acknowledgments: This research was funded by National Science Foundation grants SES1423784 and SES1918342. We thank David Skalinder and John Lemke for research assistance. This article is an extensively revised version that includes updated and corrected data of papers previously presented at conferences in 2017 and 2019.

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Citation: Oliver, Pamela, Chaeyoon Lim, Morgan C. Matthews, and Alex Hanna. 2022. “Black Protests in the United States, 1994 to 2010.” Sociological Science 9: 275-312.
Received: November 24, 2021
Accepted: December 12, 2021
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Sarah Soule
DOI: 10.15195/v9.a12

Where Do Cultural Tastes Come From? Genes, Environments, or Experiences

By Parker Webservices on May 23, 2022 in Articles

Mads Meier Jæger and Stine Møllegaard

Sociological Science May 23, 2022
10.15195/v9.a11

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Theories in sociology argue that family background and individual experiences shape cultural tastes and participation. Yet, we do not know the relative importance of each explanation or the extent to which family background operates via shared genes or shared environments. In this article, we use new data on same-sex monozygotic and dizygotic twins from Denmark to estimate the total impact of family background (genetic and environmental) and individual experiences on highbrow and lowbrow tastes and participation and on omnivorousness in music and reading. We find that family background explains more than half of the total variance in cultural tastes and participation and in omnivorousness. Moreover, family background operates mainly via shared genes, with shared environments shaping cultural tastes to some extent, but not cultural participation. Our findings support theories claiming that family background is instrumental in shaping cultural tastes and participation but highlight the relevance of distinguishing genetic and environmental aspects of family background.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Mads Meier Jæger: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: mmj@soc.ku.dk

Stine Møllegaard: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: stinem@soc.ku.dk

Acknowledgments:We have presented earlier versions of this article at seminars at Uppsala University, the University of Lausanne, University of Oslo, and the University of Copenhagen. We thank participants at these seminars for constructive comments. The research presented in this article was funded by the Velux Foundation (grant number 00001700).

Comment Rejoinder

Citation: Jæger, Mads Meier, and Stine Møllegaard. 2022. “Where Do Cultural Tastes Come From? Genes, Environments, or Experiences.” Sociological Science 9: 252-274.
Received: January 19, 2022
Accepted: March 16, 2022
Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Jeremy Freese
DOI: 10.15195/v9.a11

"Choose the Plan That’s Right for You": Choice Devolution as Class-Biased Institutional Change in U.S. Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance

By Parker Webservices on May 16, 2022 in Articles

Adam Goldstein, James Franklin Wharam

Sociological Science May 16, 2022
10.15195/v9.a10

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This study examines the distributional consequences of U.S. employers’ efforts to devolve responsibility for managing their employees’ medical insurance risk. The logic of consumer choice has increasingly come to dominate insurance benefit design, requiring that employees learn to be their own actuaries. We ask, to what extent does the individuation of choice (between insurance plans with disparate levels of cost-sharing) alter the social stratification of out-of-pocket (OOP) medical expenditure burdens across socioeconomic status class strata? Our analysis draws on an insurance claims database from a large multi-employer commercial insurer, which includes information on plan offerings and realized OOP expenditure burdens for more than 37 million persons from 2002 to 2012. Consistent with expectations, the results of pooled difference-in-difference event study models reveal that transitions to devolved choice result in modestly greater increases in realized OOP burden among lower socioeconomic status enrollees, compared with the growth among higher-status enrollees. However, the magnitude of the increase in the between-class expenditure burden disparity is small in substantive terms.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Adam Goldstein: Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs
E-mail: amg5@princeton.edu

James Franklin Wharam: Duke University Department of Medicine and Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy
E-mail: james.wharam@duke.edu

Acknowledgments:This study was generously supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Scholars in Health Policy Research Program. The authors thank Robert LeCates and Fang Zhang for sharing data and assistance with variable derivation. Katherine Swartz, Paul Starr, Jeremy Cohen, and Simone Schneider provided helpful comments on earlier drafts. The study benefited from the feedback of audiences and participants at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Research Annual Meeting, the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, and Princeton’s Center for the Study of Social Organization Seminar.

Citation: Goldstein, Adam, and James Franklin Wharam. 2022. “‘Choose the Plan That’s Right for You’: Choice Devolution as Class-Biased Institutional Change in U.S. Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance.” Sociological Science 9: 221-251.
Received: January 3, 2022
Accepted: March 21, 2022
Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Cristobal Young
DOI: 10.15195/v9.a10

Demographic Change and Group Boundaries in Germany: The Effect of Projected Demographic Decline on Perceptions of Who Has a Migration Background

By Parker Webservices on May 9, 2022 in Articles

Johanna Gereke, Joshua Hellyer, Jan Behnert, Saskia Exner, Alexander Herbel, Felix Jäger, Dean Lajic, Štepán Mezenský, Vu Ngoc Anh, Tymoteusz Ogłaza, Jule Schabinger, Anna Sokolova, Daria Szafran, Noah Tirolf, Susanne Veit, and Nan Zhang

Sociological Science May 9, 2022
10.15195/v9.a9

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In many Western societies, the current “native” majority will become a numerical minority sometime within the next century. How does prospective demographic change affect existing group boundaries? An influential recent article by Abascal (2020) showed that white Americans under demographic threat reacted with boundary contraction—that is, they were less likely to classify ambiguously white people as “white.” The present study examines the generalizability of these findings beyond the American context. Specifically, we test whether informing Germans about the projected decline of the “native” population without migration background affects the classification of phenotypically ambiguous individuals. Our results show that information about demographic change neither affects the definition of group boundaries nor generates negative feelings toward minority outgroups. These findings point to the relevance of contextual differences in shaping the conditions under which demographic change triggers group threat and boundary shifts.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Johanna Gereke: Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung (MZES), University of Mannheim
E-mail: johanna.gereke@mzes.uni-mannheim.de

Joshua Hellyer: Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung (MZES), University of Mannheim
E-mail: joshua.hellyer@mzes.uni-mannheim.de

Jan Behnert: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: jbehnert@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Saskia Exner: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: sexner@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Alexander Herbel: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: aherbel@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Felix Jäger: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: jaeger@uni-mannheim.de

Dean Lajic: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: dlajic@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Štepán Mezenský: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: tmezensk@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Vu Ngoc Anh: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: vngocanh@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Tymoteusz Ogłaza: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: toglaza@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Jule Schabinger: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: jschabin@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Anna Sokolova: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: anna.sokolova@uni-mannheim.de

Daria Szafran: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: dszafran@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Noah Tirolf: School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim
E-mail: notirolf@mail.uni-mannheim.de

Susanne Veit: German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM-Institut)
E-mail: veit@dezim-institut.de

Nan Zhang: Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung (MZES), University of Mannheim
E-mail: nan.zhang@mzes.uni-mannheim.de

Acknowledgments:This research was supported by funding from the Stifterverband and the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung for “Innovation in Teaching.”

Citation: Gereke, Johanna, Joshua Hellyer, Jan Behnert, Saskia Exner, Alexander Herbel, Felix Jäger, Dean Lajic, Štepán Mezenský, Vu Ngoc Anh, Tymoteusz Ogłaza, Jule Schabinger, Anna Sokolova, Daria Szafran, Noah Tirolf, Susanne Veit, and Nan Zhang. 2022. “Demographic Change and Group Boundaries in Germany: The Effect of Projected Demographic Decline on Perceptions of Who Has a Migration Background.” Sociological Science 9: 206-220.
Received: January 12, 2022
Accepted: March 8, 2022
Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Vida Maralani
DOI: 10.15195/v9.a9

Cohort Succession Explains Most Change in Literary Culture

By Parker Webservices on May 2, 2022 in Articles

Ted Underwood, Kevin Kiley, Wenyi Shang, Stephen Vaisey

Sociological Science May 2, 2022
10.15195/v9.a8

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Many aspects of behavior are guided by dispositions that are relatively durable once formed. Political opinions and phonology, for instance, change largely through cohort succession. But evidence for cohort effects has been scarce in artistic and intellectual history; researchers in those fields more commonly explain change as an immediate response to recent innovations and events. We test these conflicting theories of change in a corpus of 10,830 works of fiction from 1880 to 1999 and find that slightly more than half (54.7 percent) of the variance explained by time is explained better by an author’s year of birth than by a book’s year of publication. Writing practices do change across an author’s career. But the pace of change declines steeply with age. This finding suggests that existing histories of literary culture have a large blind spot: the early experiences that form cohorts are pivotal but leave few traces in the historical record.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Ted Underwood: School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
E-mail: tunder@illinois.edu

Kevin Kiley: Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Iowa
E-mail: kevin-kiley@uiowa.edu

Wenyi Shang: School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
E-mail: wenyis3@illinois.edu

Stephen Vaisey: Department of Sociology, Duke University
E-mail: stephen.vaisey@duke.edu

Acknowledgments:The authors relied heavily on publication data manually constructed by Patrick Kimutis, Hoyt Long, Edwin Roland, Richard Jean So, and Jessica Witte; that data construction work was partially funded by SSHRC through the NovelTM project.

Citation: Underwood, Ted, Kevin Kiley, Wenyi Shang, and Stephen Vaisey. 2022. “Cohort Succession Explains Most Change in Literary Culture.” Sociological Science 9: 184-205.
Received: January 17, 2022
Accepted: March 16, 2022
Editors: Ari Adut, Gabriel Rossman
DOI: 10.15195/v9.a8

Marriage, Kids, and the Picket Fence? Household Type and Wealth among U.S. Households, 1989 to 2019

By Parker Webservices on April 25, 2022 in Articles

Christine Percheski, Christina Gibson-Davis

Sociological Science April 25, 2022
10.15195/v9.a7

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Evidence on how parenthood affects household wealth in the United States has been inconclusive, partially because previous studies have decontextualized parenthood from gender, marital, and relationship status. Yet, insights from economic sociology suggest that wealth-related behaviors are shaped by the intersection of identities, not by a binary classification of parental status. We examine net worth by the intersection of gender, parental, and relationship status during a period of increasing wealth inequality and family diversification. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances from 1989 through 2019, we show that aggregate comparisons between parents and non-parents mask substantial wealth variation across nine household types. Despite changing social selection into marriage and parenthood, married parents consistently held a wealth advantage over demographically similar adults in other household types. Married parents’ wealth advantage descriptively arises from homeownership, perhaps because the combined spousal and parental identities are normatively and culturally associated with homeownership.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Christine Percheski: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
E-mail: c-percheski@northwestern.edu

Christina Gibson-Davis: Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
E-mail: cgibson@duke.edu

Acknowledgments: We gratefully acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation (award 1459631) and advice from Sara McLanahan, Michael Hout, Michelle Weinberger, and several anonymous reviewers.

Citation: Percheski, Christine, and Christina Gibson-Davis. 2022. “Marriage, Kids, and the Picket Fence? Household Type and Wealth among U.S. Households, 1989 to 2019.” Sociological Science 9: 159-183.
Received: March 10, 2021
Accepted: April 30, 2022
Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Vida Maralani
DOI: 10.15195/v9.a7

The Stalled Gender Revolution and the Rise of Top Earnings in the United States, 1980 to 2017

By Parker Webservices on April 11, 2022 in Articles

Hadas Mandel, Assaf Rotman

Sociological Science April 11, 2022
10.15195/v9.a6

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The steep rise of top wages is acknowledged as one of the main drivers of the rise in earnings inequality between workers in most postindustrial labor markets. Yet its relation to gender stratification, in particular to the stagnation in the gender pay gap, has received very little scholarly attention. Using data from the U.S. Current Population Survey, conducted between 1980 and 2017, we provide evidence of the enormous weight that the dynamic at the top of the earnings distribution exerts on the gender pay gap. We also show how this dynamic inhibits the consequences of the countervailing process of gender vertical desegregation. Although developments in gender inequality and in the rise of top wages have drawn extensive scholarly attention and have even penetrated into the public discourse in recent years, the two dimensions of inequality are often perceived as unrelated to one another. Our findings, then, highlight the connection between different forms of inequality—class inequality and gender inequality—a relation that demands much more attention in the new economy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Hadas Mandel: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
E-mail: hadasm@tauex.tau.ac.il

Assaf Rotman: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University
E-mail: assafrot@tauex.tau.ac.il

Acknowledgments: We thank Amit Lazarus and Michael Shalev for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. This research was funded by the generous support of the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No. 724351). Authors are listed in alphabetical order, reflecting their equal contribution.