This issue of International Journal of Sociology is the second special issue (after 49/2) that centers on scholarship that draws on the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) Role of Government (ROG) module. The ROG module was the first ISSP survey and has been fielded five times: 1985, 1990, 1996, 2006, and 2016. As guest editors, we want to thank the editor-in-chief, Markus Hadler, for being at the helm throughout all stages of this venture.
As representatives of Sweden, we acted as conveners of the drafting group of the 2016 ISSP ROG module, which included six other countries: Britain, France, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, and Spain. Our editorship of these special issues represents the finale of this project. Therefore, we want to take the opportunity to acknowledge, and express our appreciation to, our skillful colleagues on the drafting group: Akihiko Otaki (Japan), Algis Krupavičius (Lithuania), Alison Park (Britain), César Morones (Mexico), Egle Butkeviciene (Lithuania), Eleanor Attar Taylor (Britain), Frédéric Gonthier (France), Hiroko Murata (Japan), Ian Simpson (Britain), Isabelle Guinaudeau (France), Mónica Méndez-Lago (Spain), and Toshiyuki Kobayashi (Japan). We also want to recognize the work of the Data Archive for the Social Sciences, GESIS Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, who expertly assemble the ISSP data sets and make them publically available. In this regard, we owe a debt of gratitude to Petra Brien, Horst Baumann, Insa Bechert, and Markus Quandt.
The ROG module is one of the most widely used ISSP modules, and the contributions to the special issues of International Journal of Sociology nicely illustrate how the ROG module is useful for tackling many different types of questions in comparative research.
Markus Hadler, Christian Mayer, and Anja Eder offer an overview of longitudinal trends in some of the module’s core survey batteries, focusing on countries that have fielded the module at least since 1990. Their analysis suggests that there is a high degree of persistency in attitudes over time at the country level. Their contribution highlights how this new wave of ROG data strengthens that analytical capacity for longitudinal analysis, and we hope to see more studies of this kind in the years to come, which can shed further light on these issues.
Nate Breznau conducts a detailed investigation of the measurement properties of the frequently used “government responsibility” battery. Breznau finds notable heterogeneity and subdimensions in the data but concludes that there is evidence for a latent global attitude on the role of government responsibility that exists across countries and over time.
Young-hwan Buyn’s contribution incorporates non-Western countries into the study of social cleavages in public preferences toward state-organized redistribution. Using the 2016 ROG data, he finds a positive country-level correlation between the magnitude of cleavages in preferences and the level of actual redistribution.
Ricardo Gonzalez, Bernardo Mackenna, and Esteban Muñoz center on the global challenge of corruption. Drawing on the 2016 ROG data, they find, among other things, that the individual-level correlation between perceptions and experiences of corruption is stronger (weaker) in countries with lower (higher) levels of actual corruption.
To close out this note, we want to wish all members of the international research community the best of success with analyzing this exciting new wave of ROG data.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jonas Edlund
Jonas Edlund is Professor of Sociology at Umeå University. His main areas of interest are comparative political sociology and stratification. He leads the Swedish research team of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP).
Arvid Lindh
Arvid Lindh is Assistant Professor at the Swedish Institute of Social Research, Stockholm University. His main research interests lie in the intersection between political and economic sociology. Together with Jonas Edlund, he represented Sweden in the drafting groups of the 2016 ISSP Role of Government module and the 2019 ISSP Social Inequality module.