Does electoral democracy boost economic equality?

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 20, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 21-35

  Bermeo, Nancy ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 73649105476     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.0.0112     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (56)

1. Jorge Vargas Cullell and Dan Banik contributed to this definition.
2. Millennium Project Report to the UN Secretary-General, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals (London: Earthscan, 2005), 4.
3. Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, "What Democracy Is . . . and Is Not," Journal of Democracy 2 (Summer 1991): 76.
4. Adam Przeworski, "The Poor and the Viability of Democracy," in Anirudh Krishna, ed., Poverty, Participation, and Democracy: A Global Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Also available at http://politics.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/2800/duke.pdf.
5. Electoral democracy is defined at www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page= 35&year=2005.
6. Mark Gradstein and Branko Milanovic, "Does Liberté = Egalité? A Survey of the Empirical Links between Democracy and Inequality with Some Evidence on the Transition Economies," Policy Research Working Paper 2875, World Bank, 2002, 6;
7. Alberto Alesina and Dani Rodrik, "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," Quarterly Journal of Economics 109 (May 1994): 465-490;
8. Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?" American Economic Review 84 (June 1994): 600-21;
9. Simon Kuznets, "Economic Growth and Income Inequality," American Economic Review 45 (March 1955): 17.
10. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 37-38, 63, and 359-360
11. Anthony B. Atkinson and Andrea Brandolini, "Promise and Pitfalls in the Use of 'Secondary' Data-Sets: Income Inequality in OECD Countries as a Case Study," Journal of Economic Literature 39 (September 2001): 771-799
12. Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes, "Endogenous Democratization," World Politics 55 (July 2003): 517-549
13. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, "The Quality of Democracy: Addressing Inequality," Journal of Democracy 15 (October 2004): 79.
14. Larry M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
15. Woojin Lee and John Roemer, "Moral Values and Distributive Politics: An Equilibrium Analysis of the 2004 Election," in Ian Shapiro, Peter A. Swenson, and Daniela Donno, eds., Divide and Deal: The Politics of Distribution in Democracies (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 187.
16. Frederick Solt, "Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement," American Journal of Political Science 52 (January 2008): 54.
17. Przeworski, "The Poor and the Viability of Democracy," 25;
18. Terry Lynn Karl, "Economic Inequality and Democratic Instability," Journal of Democracy 11 (January 2000): 156.
19. Christopher J. Anderson and Pablo Beramendi, "Income, Inequality, and Electoral Participation," in Pablo Beramendi and Christopher J. Anderson, eds., Democracy, Inequality, and Representation (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 303.
20. Frederick Solt, "Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement," 54.
21. Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality (New York: Yale University Press, 2006), 85-86.
22. Pablo Fajnzylber, Daniel Lederman, and Norman Loayza, "Inequality and Violent Crime," Journal of Law and Economics 45 (April 2002);
23. J. Humberto Lopez and Guillermo Perry, "Inequality in Latin America: Determinants and Consequences," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4504, World Bank, 2008, 3.
24. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (London: Allen Lane, 2009), 135.
25. Amartya Sen, "Violence, Identity and Poverty," Journal of Peace Research 45 (January 2008): 5-15;
26. Gudrun Østby, "Polarization, Horizontal Inequalities and Violent Civil Conflict," Journal of Peace Research 45 (March 2008): 143-162;
27. Frances Stewart, ed., Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict (London: Palgrave, 2008);
28. Marie L. Besançon, "Relative Resources: Inequality in Ethnic Wars, Revolutions, and Genocides," Journal of Peace Research 42 (July 2005): 393-415.
29. Amartya Sen, "Violence, Identity and Poverty," 14.
30. Terry Lynn Karl, "Economic Inequality and Democratic Instability," 156.
31. Edward L. Glaeser, "Inequality," NBBR Working Paper No. W11511, August 2005, 9.
32. Bolivar Lamounier, "Introduction: Globalization, Social Inequality, and Democracy," in Joseph S. Tulchin and Amelia Brown, eds., Democratic Governance and Social Inequality (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 4-5.
33. John Ferejohn, "Is Inequality a Threat to Democracy?" in Lawrence Jacobs and Desmond King, eds., The Unsustainable American State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 44.
34. Alesina and Rodrik, "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth"
35. J. Humberto Lopez and Luis Servén, "A Normal Relationship? Poverty, Growth, and Inequality," World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3814, 2006;
36. Francisco H.G. Ferreira and Martin Ravallion, "Global Poverty and Inequality: A Review of the Evidence," World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series 4623, 2008;
37. Lopez and Perry, "Inequality in Latin America,"
38. Martin Ravallion, "Inequality is Bad for the Poor," in Stephen P. Jenkins and John Micklewright, eds., Inequality and Poverty Re-Examined (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 50.
39. Data available at www.afrobarometer.org and www.asiabarometer.org.
40. See the AmericasBarometer data at www.lapop.org.
41. These two options were offered to respondents as polar ends of a 10-point scale measuring degrees of agreement or disagreement.
42. Judith Squires, "Equality and Difference," in John S. Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, and Anne Phillips, eds., Oxford Handbook of Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 470.
43. Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage, "Religion and Social Insurance: Evidence from the United States, 1970-2002," in Shapiro, Swenson, and Donno, Divide and Deal, 154.
44. Ben Ansell and David Samuels, "Inequality and Democratization," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 2008.
45. Edwin Goñi, J. Humberto Lopez, and Luis Servén, "Getting Real about Inequality: Evidence from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru," World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series 3815, 2006;
46. Guillermo E. Perry et al., Poverty Reduction and Growth: Virtuous and Vicious Circles (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2006)
47. Lopez and Perry, "Inequality in Latin America," 18.
48. Ethan B. Kapstein and Nathan Converse, "Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy: Why Democracies Fail," Journal of Democracy 19 (October 2008): 61-62.
49. The term "populist wave" and the populist cases discussed here come from Thomas Carothers, "Stepping Back from Democratic Pessimism," Carnegie Paper No. 99, February 2009.
50. These generalizations come from data provided by Frederick Solt and reflect Ginicoefficient scores drawn from net household data.
51. Jon C. Pevehouse, Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005);
52. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, "International Linkage and Democratization," Journal of Democracy 16 (July 2005): 20-34;
53. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, From Authoritarianism to Competitive Regimes: Latin America's Great Transformation, 1900-2009 (forthcoming).
54. See the February 2009 report of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, The Global Middle Class: Views on Democracy, Religion, Values, and Life Satisfaction in Emerging Nations, available at http://pewglobal.org/commentary/pdf/1051.pdf.
55. Christopher Reenock, Michael Bernhard, and David Sobek, "Regressive Socioeconomic Distribution and Democratic Survival," International Studies Quarterly 51 (September 2007): 677.
56. Polity IV data and the World Bank Development Indicators. Only democracies with populations of a million or more are included.