‘Don’t play if you can’t win’: does economic inequality undermine political equality?

Autor: Armin Schäfer, Hanna Schwander
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
inequality
democracy
Sociology and Political Science
Inequality
Politikwissenschaft
Ungleichheit
income distribution
media_common.quotation_subject
industrial nation
Federal Republic of Germany
Wahlbeteiligung
triangulation
soziale Ungleichheit
Economic inequality
Wahlverhalten
Voting
OECD member country
Economics
OECD-Staat
difference in income
Social inequality
Political Process
Elections
Political Sociology
Political Culture
Political science
media_common
politische Willensbildung
politische Soziologie
politische Kultur
European Social Survey
social inequality
Eurobarometer
ISSP
Industriestaat
voting behavior
voter turnout
Eurobarometer 30 (Oct-Nov 1988)
ZA2690: Eurobarometer 44.1 (Nov-Dec 1995)
Comparative Study of Electoral Systems
modules 1–5
1996–2016 (CSES 1–4)
International Social Survey Project (ISSP)
1985–2010
European Social Survey (ESS)
seven waves
2002–2014 [economic inequality
electoral turnout
methods triangulation
developed countries
ZA1715]
Bundesrepublik Deutschland
Democracy
Einkommensverteilung
Political system
ddc:320
Political Science and International Relations
Survey data collection
Demographic economics
Aggregate data
Einkommensunterschied
Demokratie
Zdroj: European Political Science Review
ISSN: 1755-7747
1755-7739
DOI: 10.1017/s1755773919000201
Popis: In this paper, we investigate whether income inequality negatively affects voter turnout. Despite some progress, the answer to this question is still debated due to methodological disagreements and differences in the selection of countries and time periods. We contribute to this debate by triangulating data and methods. More specifically, we use three kinds of data to resolve the question: first, we use cross-sectional aggregate data of 21 OECD countries in the time period from 1980 to 2014 to study the relationship between inequality and electoral participation. Second, we zoom in on the German case and examine local data from 402 administrative districts between 1998 and 2017. Focusing on within-country variation eliminates differences that are linked to features of the political system. Finally, we combine survey data with macro-data to investigate the impact of inequality on individual voting. This final step also allows us to test whether the effect of income inequality on voter turnout differs across income groups. Taken together, we offer the most comprehensive analysis of the impact of social inequality on political inequality to date. We corroborate accounts that argue that economic inequality exacerbates participatory inequality.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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