The Equality Positions and Policies of Governments, 1970–2020: How Egalitarian Parties Evoke Equality While Evading Real Redistribution

Despite egalitarian rhetoric, governments often fail to implement redistributive policies. We argue that selective egalitarianism helps to understand this puzzle. Analysing a new dataset of 850,000 manifesto statements and equality policies in 12 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (1970–2020), we show that even parties committed to equality avoid taxing the rich. Instead of engaging in complex top-end taxation, which is perceived as electorally risky, they pursue pre-distribution and welfare policies with less concentrated costs and complexity. Even these policies are primarily adopted if the party’s constituency is not too educated or rich to benefit from them. Our findings suggest that equality-oriented governments adopt an approach that insures the middle, buffers the poor, but spares the rich. The result is a rhetorical commitment to equality that eschews its most redistributive instrument(s). The patterns we reveal help to explain the consequential disconnect between redistributive demand and actual policy, even under ostensibly economically egalitarian governments.