Higher-status positions are increasingly monopolized by dominant groups across all stratification systems.

Evidence

One defining feature of group-based social hierarchies is what Robert Putnam (1976) has labeled the law of increasing disproportion. This law suggests that the more political authority exercised by a given political position, the greater the probability that this position will be occupied by a member of the dominant group (Putnam, 1976). In addition, the law of increasing disproportion operates within all three forms of groupbased stratification (i.e., age-system, gender system, and arbitrary-set system). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3249

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names and defines Putnam’s ‘law of increasing disproportion’.
• QUESTION: Does this gradient hold for socially mobile outsiders gaining entry at levels, or are upper tiers hermetically sealed?
• XREF: Echoes the ‘glass ceiling’ research and intersectional privilege analyses; also connects to Tocqueville-era work on elite reproduction.