IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/poleco/v85y2024ics0176268024001022.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The grass is always greener on the other side: (Unfair) inequality and support for democracy

Author

Listed:
  • Reutzel, Fabian

Abstract

Does inequality undermine support for democracy? While previous research has either focused on macro-level associations or alleged a uniform relationship between inequality and individual democratic support across countries, this paper documents the importance of the current regime type and of the source of inequality for such a linkage. Exploiting differential transition to democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union allows to investigate the association of democratic support across regimes with differing levels of democracy. Inequality is found to erode democratic support in democracies and to foster democratic beliefs in non-democracies. In other words, inequality always subverts individual-level support for the current regime type. Further, evidence is provided for the relevance of disentangling the sources of economic inequality in line with fairness concerns: While unfair inequality (generated by factors beyond an individual’s control) and total inequality both are significantly correlated to democratic support, unfair inequality appears to be the relevant inequality component driving this association.

Suggested Citation

  • Reutzel, Fabian, 2024. "The grass is always greener on the other side: (Unfair) inequality and support for democracy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:85:y:2024:i:c:s0176268024001022
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102600
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268024001022
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2024.102600?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality of opportunity; Democracy; Transition economies;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • P20 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:85:y:2024:i:c:s0176268024001022. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505544 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.