Ben W Ansell
Biographic Data
| ID | 4122207 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ben W Ansell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ben W |
| FAMILY NAME | Ansell |
| SIGNATURE | ANSELL B W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8371-0507 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 779 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Homeownership and political efficacy: How housing wealth shapes whether people feel heard
Why do some citizens feel that political institutions are responsive to people like them, while others do not? Existing research highlights the role of education and income in shaping external political efficacy, but little is known about the role of wealth. This article argues that homeownership serves as a key marker of economic and social success, shaping perceptions of political inclusion, particularly later in life. While younger renters may…
Tax exposure and political preferences
How do people form preferences over tax policy proposals? This article introduces the concept of tax exposure to explain the determinants of tax preferences. Moving beyond traditional models that link attitudes to taxation in a linear fashion to income or wealth, we argue that preferences are often discontinuous or non-linear around tax thresholds. Furthermore, tax preferences are shaped by both contextual factors, such as the prevailing tax envi…
Why is it so Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality? Evidence from the United Kingdom
Despite high and rising levels of wealth inequality, many advanced democracies have cut taxes on inherited wealth in recent decades. To explain this puzzle, the authors argue that taxing inherited wealth is politically difficult because, paradoxically, the people who have the strongest material interest in higher taxes—low-wealth renters—are those least likely to express a clear opinion about inheritance taxation. Instead, the political terrain i…
Sheltering Populists? House Prices and the Support for Populist Parties
Populist parties, particularly from the right of the political spectrum, have sharply increased their electoral support in recent years, creating great media and scholarly interest. Existing work examining the economic underpinnings of populist support has focused on labor market shocks and the presence or absence of government compensation. In this paper we suggest that the housing market may have been as important as the labor market in definin…
Desk Rejecting: A Better Use of Your Time
Journal editing has become an increasingly challenging business in the past decade
The political consequences of housing (un)affordability
The enormous growth in house prices in Europe since the 1990s has led to increasing concerns about the affordability of housing for ordinary citizens. This article explores the relationship between housing affordability – house prices relative to incomes – and the demand for redistributive and housing policy, using data drawn from European and British social surveys and an analysis of British elections. It shows that, as unaffordability rises, ci…
Social distancing, politics and wealth
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, governments across Europe have attempted to prevent the spread of the disease by limiting the movement of their citizens. In this article, we analyse whether the level of compliance with social distancing measures is associated with political, economic, and demographic factors. In particular, our interests lie in two areas. First, as lockdowns have dragged on, many countries see some political resista…
Housing and populism
The recent success of populist candidates in the UK and Continental Europe has sparked a major debate between those who view populism as a reaction of the economically 'left behind' and those who view it as a cultural 'backlash' by groups with declining social status, pointing to stark divisions between urban and rural areas, core and periphery. This paper bridges the economic and values-based approaches to populism by arguing that the geography …
Brexit and the Politics of Housing in Britain
political earthquakes—both real and perceived—are trembling through Britain. In the 2015 general election, the Scottish National party and the UK Independence party mounted successful challenges from the periphery. In the 2016 referendum on EU membership, the Vote Leave campaign captured a surprising number of votes from both sides of the traditional political divide. And in the 2017 general election, an unlikely Labour leader turned metropolitan…
The Politics of Housing
Owning a house is the most important economic choice most families will ever make. Yet, our understanding of the political causes and consequences of homeownership is rather thin. This review argues that political scientists need to take housing much more seriously, not least because of the unprecedented surges and collapses of house prices over the past two decades. The housing market is both a proxy for and a cause of growing social cleavages t…
Response to Isabela Mares’s review of Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Taking Credit: Redistribution and Borrowing in an Age of Economic Polarization
Several recent studies link rising income inequality in the United States to the global financial crisis, arguing that US politicians did not respond to growing inequality with fiscal redistribution. Instead, Americans saved less and borrowed more to maintain relative consumption in the face of widening economic disparities. This article proposes a theory in which fiscal redistribution dampens the willingness of citizens to borrow to fund current…
Mismatch: University Education and Labor Market Institutions
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Journal Editors and “Results-Free” Research: A Cautionary Note
Should journals review submissions based only on the research question and research design, independent of whether the results are statistically and substantively significant? This special issue is the first effort in political science (and perhaps across the social sciences) to publish articles based on submission of research designs alone. We offer our thoughts on the process
Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach
Research on the economic origins of democracy and dictatorship has shifted away from the impact of growth and turned toward the question of how different patterns of growth - equal or unequal - shape regime change. This book offers a new theory of the historical relationship between economic modernization and the emergence of democracy on a global scale, focusing on the effects of land and income inequality. Contrary to most mainstream arguments,…
Sorting for schools: Housing, education and inequality
How do house prices affect variation in school quality and citizen satisfaction with education? In this paper, we show that the structure of socio-economic inequality produced by the housing market has dramatic effects on both citizen's preferences over education and its provision, along the lines suggested by scholars in the tradition of Tiebout. In particular, growing housing prices permit wealthier individuals to 'target' education in ways tha…
The Political Economy of Ownership: Housing Markets and the Welfare State
The major economic story of the last decade has been the surge and collapse of house prices worldwide. Yet political economists have had little to say about how this critical phenomenon affects citizens' welfare and their demands from government. This article develops a novel theoretical argument linking housing prices to social policy preferences and policy outcomes. I argue that homeowners experiencing house price appreciation will become less …
A Tale of Two Trilemmas: Varieties of Higher Education and the Service Economy
In this chapter, Ansell and Gingrich examine how the politics of higher education shape national responses to the challenge of the service transition. Specifically, they argue that applying Ansell’s (2008) distinction between elite, mass public, and partially private higher education systems helps to explain the different patterns of employment in the service sector. The authors analyze data on higher education enrolment and service sector employ…
The Political Origins of Primary Education Systems: Ideology, Institutions, and Interdenominational Conflict in an Era of Nation-Building
This paper is concerned with the development of national primary education regimes in Europe, North America, Latin America, Oceania, and Japan between 1870 and 1939. We examine why school systems varied between countries and over time, concentrating on three institutional dimensions: centralization, secularization, and subsidization. There were two paths to centralization: through liberal and social democratic governments in democracies, or throu…
Preferences in Context: Micro Preferences, Macro Contexts, and the Demand for Social Policy
Political economists have increasingly looked to understand social welfare policy as a product of individual-level demand for social spending. This work hypothesizes that individuals with riskier jobs demand more social spending and that large welfare states emerge where there are more of such individuals. In this article we build on the “policy feedback” literature to argue that existing welfare institutions condition how individual-level factor…
Assets in Crisis: Housing, Preferences and Policy in the Credit Crisis
The credit crisis, beginning in 2008 and still hammering the advanced industrial world today, is distinct from other postwar recessions not only in its magnitude but also in its root causes. Previous business cycles were driven by over and under-utilization of labor and capital investment - sometimes with demand for goods and services outpacing supply, sometimes with demand collapsing and workers and products left unwanted. In other words, the bu…
From the Ballot to the Blackboard: The Redistributive Political Economy of Education
From the Ballot to the Blackboard provides the first comprehensive account of the political economy of education spending across the developed and developing world. The book demonstrates how political forces like democracy and political partisanship and economic factors like globalization deeply impact the choices made by voters, parties, and leaders in financing education. The argument is developed through three stories that track the historical…
From the ballot to the blackboard: The Redistributive Political Economy of Education
Inequality and Democratization: A Contractarian Approach
Scholars continue to grapple with the question of the relationship between economic development and democratization; prominent recent research has focused on the effects of economic inequality. Boix suggests that democratization is likelier when inequality is low, whereas Acemoglu and Robinson argue that democratization is likelier when inequality is at middling levels. Both assume that democratization is a function of autocratic elites’ fear of …
University Challenges: Explaining Institutional Change in Higher Education
Higher education policy has been subject to considerable reform in OECD states over the past two decades. Some states have introduced tuition fees, others have massively increased public funding for higher education, and still others remain in stasis, retaining the elitist model with which they began the postwar era. This article develops the argument that higher education policy in the OECD is driven by a set of partisan choices within a trilemm…
The Political Economy of Ownership: Housing Markets and the Welfare State
The major economic story of the last decade has been the surge and collapse of house prices worldwide. Yet political economists have had little to say about how this critical phenomenon affects citizens' welfare and their demands from government. This article develops a novel theoretical argument linking housing prices to social policy preferences and policy outcomes. I argue that homeowners experiencing house price appreciation will become less …
Housing and populism
The recent success of populist candidates in the UK and Continental Europe has sparked a major debate between those who view populism as a reaction of the economically 'left behind' and those who view it as a cultural 'backlash' by groups with declining social status, pointing to stark divisions between urban and rural areas, core and periphery. This paper bridges the economic and values-based approaches to populism by arguing that the geography …
Preferences in Context: Micro Preferences, Macro Contexts, and the Demand for Social Policy
Political economists have increasingly looked to understand social welfare policy as a product of individual-level demand for social spending. This work hypothesizes that individuals with riskier jobs demand more social spending and that large welfare states emerge where there are more of such individuals. In this article we build on the “policy feedback” literature to argue that existing welfare institutions condition how individual-level factor…
Inequality and Democratization: A Contractarian Approach
Scholars continue to grapple with the question of the relationship between economic development and democratization; prominent recent research has focused on the effects of economic inequality. Boix suggests that democratization is likelier when inequality is low, whereas Acemoglu and Robinson argue that democratization is likelier when inequality is at middling levels. Both assume that democratization is a function of autocratic elites’ fear of …
The Politics of Housing
Owning a house is the most important economic choice most families will ever make. Yet, our understanding of the political causes and consequences of homeownership is rather thin. This review argues that political scientists need to take housing much more seriously, not least because of the unprecedented surges and collapses of house prices over the past two decades. The housing market is both a proxy for and a cause of growing social cleavages t…
University Challenges: Explaining Institutional Change in Higher Education
Higher education policy has been subject to considerable reform in OECD states over the past two decades. Some states have introduced tuition fees, others have massively increased public funding for higher education, and still others remain in stasis, retaining the elitist model with which they began the postwar era. This article develops the argument that higher education policy in the OECD is driven by a set of partisan choices within a trilemm…
The Political Origins of Primary Education Systems: Ideology, Institutions, and Interdenominational Conflict in an Era of Nation-Building
This paper is concerned with the development of national primary education regimes in Europe, North America, Latin America, Oceania, and Japan between 1870 and 1939. We examine why school systems varied between countries and over time, concentrating on three institutional dimensions: centralization, secularization, and subsidization. There were two paths to centralization: through liberal and social democratic governments in democracies, or throu…
Sheltering Populists? House Prices and the Support for Populist Parties
Populist parties, particularly from the right of the political spectrum, have sharply increased their electoral support in recent years, creating great media and scholarly interest. Existing work examining the economic underpinnings of populist support has focused on labor market shocks and the presence or absence of government compensation. In this paper we suggest that the housing market may have been as important as the labor market in definin…
Taking Credit: Redistribution and Borrowing in an Age of Economic Polarization
Several recent studies link rising income inequality in the United States to the global financial crisis, arguing that US politicians did not respond to growing inequality with fiscal redistribution. Instead, Americans saved less and borrowed more to maintain relative consumption in the face of widening economic disparities. This article proposes a theory in which fiscal redistribution dampens the willingness of citizens to borrow to fund current…
Traders, Teachers, and Tyrants: Democracy, Globalization, and Public Investment in Education
This article develops a model of the redistributive political economy of education spending, focusing on the role of democracy and economic openness in determining the provision of education. I argue that democratization should be associated with higher levels of public education spending, lower private education spending, and a shift from tertiary education spending toward primary education spending. Furthermore, I argue that integration with th…
The political consequences of housing (un)affordability
The enormous growth in house prices in Europe since the 1990s has led to increasing concerns about the affordability of housing for ordinary citizens. This article explores the relationship between housing affordability – house prices relative to incomes – and the demand for redistributive and housing policy, using data drawn from European and British social surveys and an analysis of British elections. It shows that, as unaffordability rises, ci…
Brexit and the Politics of Housing in Britain
political earthquakes—both real and perceived—are trembling through Britain. In the 2015 general election, the Scottish National party and the UK Independence party mounted successful challenges from the periphery. In the 2016 referendum on EU membership, the Vote Leave campaign captured a surprising number of votes from both sides of the traditional political divide. And in the 2017 general election, an unlikely Labour leader turned metropolitan…
Sorting for schools: Housing, education and inequality
How do house prices affect variation in school quality and citizen satisfaction with education? In this paper, we show that the structure of socio-economic inequality produced by the housing market has dramatic effects on both citizen's preferences over education and its provision, along the lines suggested by scholars in the tradition of Tiebout. In particular, growing housing prices permit wealthier individuals to 'target' education in ways tha…
Social distancing, politics and wealth
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, governments across Europe have attempted to prevent the spread of the disease by limiting the movement of their citizens. In this article, we analyse whether the level of compliance with social distancing measures is associated with political, economic, and demographic factors. In particular, our interests lie in two areas. First, as lockdowns have dragged on, many countries see some political resista…
Assets in Crisis: Housing, Preferences and Policy in the Credit Crisis
The credit crisis, beginning in 2008 and still hammering the advanced industrial world today, is distinct from other postwar recessions not only in its magnitude but also in its root causes. Previous business cycles were driven by over and under-utilization of labor and capital investment - sometimes with demand for goods and services outpacing supply, sometimes with demand collapsing and workers and products left unwanted. In other words, the bu…
Journal Editors and “Results-Free” Research: A Cautionary Note
Should journals review submissions based only on the research question and research design, independent of whether the results are statistically and substantively significant? This special issue is the first effort in political science (and perhaps across the social sciences) to publish articles based on submission of research designs alone. We offer our thoughts on the process
Why is it so Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality? Evidence from the United Kingdom
Despite high and rising levels of wealth inequality, many advanced democracies have cut taxes on inherited wealth in recent decades. To explain this puzzle, the authors argue that taxing inherited wealth is politically difficult because, paradoxically, the people who have the strongest material interest in higher taxes—low-wealth renters—are those least likely to express a clear opinion about inheritance taxation. Instead, the political terrain i…
Mismatch: University Education and Labor Market Institutions
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
University Challenges: Explaining Institutional Change in Higher Education
Higher education policy has been subject to considerable reform in OECD states over the past two decades. Some states have introduced tuition fees, others have massively increased public funding for higher education, and still others remain in stasis, retaining the elitist model with which they began the postwar era. This article develops the argument that higher education policy in the OECD is driven by a set of partisan choices within a trilemm…
Traders, Teachers, and Tyrants: Democracy, Globalization, and Public Investment in Education
This article develops a model of the redistributive political economy of education spending, focusing on the role of democracy and economic openness in determining the provision of education. I argue that democratization should be associated with higher levels of public education spending, lower private education spending, and a shift from tertiary education spending toward primary education spending. Furthermore, I argue that integration with th…
From the Ballot to the Blackboard: The Redistributive Political Economy of Education
From the Ballot to the Blackboard provides the first comprehensive account of the political economy of education spending across the developed and developing world. The book demonstrates how political forces like democracy and political partisanship and economic factors like globalization deeply impact the choices made by voters, parties, and leaders in financing education. The argument is developed through three stories that track the historical…
From the ballot to the blackboard: The Redistributive Political Economy of Education
Inequality and Democratization: A Contractarian Approach
Scholars continue to grapple with the question of the relationship between economic development and democratization; prominent recent research has focused on the effects of economic inequality. Boix suggests that democratization is likelier when inequality is low, whereas Acemoglu and Robinson argue that democratization is likelier when inequality is at middling levels. Both assume that democratization is a function of autocratic elites’ fear of …
Preferences in Context: Micro Preferences, Macro Contexts, and the Demand for Social Policy
Political economists have increasingly looked to understand social welfare policy as a product of individual-level demand for social spending. This work hypothesizes that individuals with riskier jobs demand more social spending and that large welfare states emerge where there are more of such individuals. In this article we build on the “policy feedback” literature to argue that existing welfare institutions condition how individual-level factor…
Assets in Crisis: Housing, Preferences and Policy in the Credit Crisis
The credit crisis, beginning in 2008 and still hammering the advanced industrial world today, is distinct from other postwar recessions not only in its magnitude but also in its root causes. Previous business cycles were driven by over and under-utilization of labor and capital investment - sometimes with demand for goods and services outpacing supply, sometimes with demand collapsing and workers and products left unwanted. In other words, the bu…
A Tale of Two Trilemmas: Varieties of Higher Education and the Service Economy
In this chapter, Ansell and Gingrich examine how the politics of higher education shape national responses to the challenge of the service transition. Specifically, they argue that applying Ansell’s (2008) distinction between elite, mass public, and partially private higher education systems helps to explain the different patterns of employment in the service sector. The authors analyze data on higher education enrolment and service sector employ…
The Political Origins of Primary Education Systems: Ideology, Institutions, and Interdenominational Conflict in an Era of Nation-Building
This paper is concerned with the development of national primary education regimes in Europe, North America, Latin America, Oceania, and Japan between 1870 and 1939. We examine why school systems varied between countries and over time, concentrating on three institutional dimensions: centralization, secularization, and subsidization. There were two paths to centralization: through liberal and social democratic governments in democracies, or throu…
Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach
Research on the economic origins of democracy and dictatorship has shifted away from the impact of growth and turned toward the question of how different patterns of growth - equal or unequal - shape regime change. This book offers a new theory of the historical relationship between economic modernization and the emergence of democracy on a global scale, focusing on the effects of land and income inequality. Contrary to most mainstream arguments,…
Sorting for schools: Housing, education and inequality
How do house prices affect variation in school quality and citizen satisfaction with education? In this paper, we show that the structure of socio-economic inequality produced by the housing market has dramatic effects on both citizen's preferences over education and its provision, along the lines suggested by scholars in the tradition of Tiebout. In particular, growing housing prices permit wealthier individuals to 'target' education in ways tha…
The Political Economy of Ownership: Housing Markets and the Welfare State
The major economic story of the last decade has been the surge and collapse of house prices worldwide. Yet political economists have had little to say about how this critical phenomenon affects citizens' welfare and their demands from government. This article develops a novel theoretical argument linking housing prices to social policy preferences and policy outcomes. I argue that homeowners experiencing house price appreciation will become less …
Journal Editors and “Results-Free” Research: A Cautionary Note
Should journals review submissions based only on the research question and research design, independent of whether the results are statistically and substantively significant? This special issue is the first effort in political science (and perhaps across the social sciences) to publish articles based on submission of research designs alone. We offer our thoughts on the process
Response to Isabela Mares’s review of Inequality and Democratization: An Elite-Competition Approach
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Taking Credit: Redistribution and Borrowing in an Age of Economic Polarization
Several recent studies link rising income inequality in the United States to the global financial crisis, arguing that US politicians did not respond to growing inequality with fiscal redistribution. Instead, Americans saved less and borrowed more to maintain relative consumption in the face of widening economic disparities. This article proposes a theory in which fiscal redistribution dampens the willingness of citizens to borrow to fund current…
Mismatch: University Education and Labor Market Institutions
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Brexit and the Politics of Housing in Britain
political earthquakes—both real and perceived—are trembling through Britain. In the 2015 general election, the Scottish National party and the UK Independence party mounted successful challenges from the periphery. In the 2016 referendum on EU membership, the Vote Leave campaign captured a surprising number of votes from both sides of the traditional political divide. And in the 2017 general election, an unlikely Labour leader turned metropolitan…
The Politics of Housing
Owning a house is the most important economic choice most families will ever make. Yet, our understanding of the political causes and consequences of homeownership is rather thin. This review argues that political scientists need to take housing much more seriously, not least because of the unprecedented surges and collapses of house prices over the past two decades. The housing market is both a proxy for and a cause of growing social cleavages t…
Housing and populism
The recent success of populist candidates in the UK and Continental Europe has sparked a major debate between those who view populism as a reaction of the economically 'left behind' and those who view it as a cultural 'backlash' by groups with declining social status, pointing to stark divisions between urban and rural areas, core and periphery. This paper bridges the economic and values-based approaches to populism by arguing that the geography …
Desk Rejecting: A Better Use of Your Time
Journal editing has become an increasingly challenging business in the past decade
The political consequences of housing (un)affordability
The enormous growth in house prices in Europe since the 1990s has led to increasing concerns about the affordability of housing for ordinary citizens. This article explores the relationship between housing affordability – house prices relative to incomes – and the demand for redistributive and housing policy, using data drawn from European and British social surveys and an analysis of British elections. It shows that, as unaffordability rises, ci…
Social distancing, politics and wealth
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, governments across Europe have attempted to prevent the spread of the disease by limiting the movement of their citizens. In this article, we analyse whether the level of compliance with social distancing measures is associated with political, economic, and demographic factors. In particular, our interests lie in two areas. First, as lockdowns have dragged on, many countries see some political resista…
Sheltering Populists? House Prices and the Support for Populist Parties
Populist parties, particularly from the right of the political spectrum, have sharply increased their electoral support in recent years, creating great media and scholarly interest. Existing work examining the economic underpinnings of populist support has focused on labor market shocks and the presence or absence of government compensation. In this paper we suggest that the housing market may have been as important as the labor market in definin…
Why is it so Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality? Evidence from the United Kingdom
Despite high and rising levels of wealth inequality, many advanced democracies have cut taxes on inherited wealth in recent decades. To explain this puzzle, the authors argue that taxing inherited wealth is politically difficult because, paradoxically, the people who have the strongest material interest in higher taxes—low-wealth renters—are those least likely to express a clear opinion about inheritance taxation. Instead, the political terrain i…
Homeownership and political efficacy: How housing wealth shapes whether people feel heard
Why do some citizens feel that political institutions are responsive to people like them, while others do not? Existing research highlights the role of education and income in shaping external political efficacy, but little is known about the role of wealth. This article argues that homeownership serves as a key marker of economic and social success, shaping perceptions of political inclusion, particularly later in life. While younger renters may…
Political science (19 works) · Economics (18 works) · Politics (18 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (13 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Inequality (8 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Democracy (7 works)