Description
‘Affirmative action’, sometimes called ‘positive action’, favouring members of marginalized populations in, for instance, university enrolment, public employment, and political representation, is a core policy approach to addressing group-based inequality. Affirmative action policies targeting racial and ethnic minorities have been adopted by dozens of countries as a means of correcting historical injustices, supporting marginalized groups, and promoting equality. Sharply debated, they have been criticized especially in terms of fairness to non-target groups and their potential to contribute to societal conflict.
Although there is a large literature on affirmative action, much of it focuses on a limited set of countries, in particular the United States, India, Brazil, Malaysia, and South Africa (see Schotte, Gisselquist, & Leone 2023). While much can be learned from these experiences, without a stronger sense of the universe of cases, we have little leverage on the generalizability of findings drawn from them. Indeed, the extant literature suggests clearly that macrostructural, institutional, and other factors influence the adoption, implementation, and impact of affirmative action policies, yet to date, we have lacked a cross-country dataset providing the sort of comparative information that would allow for systematic consideration of such relationships.
Speaking to this research gap, this paper presents the new Affirmative Action Dataset. The dataset provides detailed information in a standardized format on the design and modalities of affirmative action policies targeting ethnic and racial minorities, as well as on their adoption, implementation, and impact. A pilot Version 1, completed in January 2023, covered 53 countries based on review and analysis of material by at least two coders per country. Version 2 (December 2023), which is used in this paper, offers expanded coverage of 70 countries. In addition to the database, country factsheets explaining the data codings and providing additional context information have been prepared and will be released with Version 2.
The paper begins with brief review of the literature on affirmative action, situating the value of the new Affirmative Action Dataset. Section 2 summarizes the research methodology, including the scope, country selection, information sources, and coding strategy. Section 3 discusses the range of affirmative action policies as adopted, summarizing broad trends based on the data compiled at the policy domain level and exploring several country examples. Section 4 offers synthesis of findings on the factors influencing affirmative action policy adoption, amendment, and abolition, while Section 5 discusses common controversies identified in the country codings. Section 6 considers evaluations and assessments of policies. A final section considers implications for future research.
