Page - (000087) - in Disrupted Development and the Future of Inequality in the Age of Automation

80 L. SCHLOGL AND A. SUMNER bearing on sentiments of (in)security, relative deprivation, and societal equity which can influence political preferences and ultimately political outcomes. There is a large body of literature providing evidence for a causal relationship of this sort (see e.g. for the impact on electoral politics: Anderson, 2000; Lewis-Beck & Stegmaier, 2000; for the impact on political preferences: Finseraas, 2009; Mughan, 2018; see also the substantial literature on economic and class voting, as well as the liter- ature on economic modernization and political values, e.g. Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). The wider interest in the role of work and (un)employment as under- pinnings of political agency goes back to early empirical social research (e.g. Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, & Zeisel, 1933), and even to the classical social theory of Karl Marx and Max Weber. As technological change influences labor market dynamics, an important field of research is the examina- tion of modernization losers as political catalysts: specifically, so-called “technological anxiety” and resistance to innovation (see Mokyr, 1998; Mokyr, Vickers, & Ziebarth, 2015); the relationship of economic ine- quality, and political polarization and extremism (see Pontusson & Rueda, 2008); and the political implications of deindustrialization (see Iversen & Cusack, 2000). 6.2 chArActerizing public policy responses Major political implications imply public policy responses. One can characterize policy responses to automation (Table 6.1). First, there is a class of policies that try to attenuate or reverse the automation trend. Among those, there are “quasi-Luddite” measures such as taxes and regu- lation that make domestic automation more (or even prohibitively) costly. Countries could also follow a strategy of what one could call “robot- substituting industrialization” where they impose tariffs on inputs/ imports with nonhuman-produced contents. The problem with such strat- egies is that protectionism of labor is difficult to implement in an open economy. Luddite policies tend to be in conflict with integration into a globalized competitive market, as they assume that the economy can somehow be insulated from competition with automated production elsewhere. The mirror image of making automation costlier would be to reduce the costs of labor, e.g. by reducing income taxes or social insurance contributions, by reducing minimum wages, or costly labor regulations. The question is how desirable and politically feasible such strategies are.