44 Pages Posted: 14 Aug 2014

Date Written: 2014

Abstract

Several prominent arguments in the social sciences draw on the assumption that progressive redistribution is a central feature of democratic politics. Applying this premise, it is, e.g., argued that the poor should favor democracy, whereas rich elites should be antagonistic – with implications for how inequality and democratization relate. We investigate this assumption empirically by analyzing individual opinions about whether progressive taxation and redistribution are among the central characteristics of democracy, and find surprisingly weak support for it. We further analyze what factors make individuals more or less likely to consider redistribution central to democracy. Running multi-level logit models, we find that having lived under a Communist regime and – although less robust – currently living under a democracy make individuals less likely to associate democracy with redistribution. However, individuals with more to gain from progressive redistribution (i.e. little education and belonging to the lower classes) are more likely to make the connection between democracy and such redistribution. We discuss how our findings may contribute to explain two central puzzles in comparative politics; I) why do democracies not promote more redistributive policies than autocracies, and II) why is there no net empirical relationship between income inequality and democratization?