IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2505.09128.html

The Nexus of Money and Political Legitimacy: A Comparative Analysis of Democracies and Non-Democracies

Author

Listed:
  • Venkat Ram Reddy Ganuthula
  • Krishna Kumar Balaraman

Abstract

This article examines the complex relationship between money and political legitimacy in democracies (United States, Germany, India) and nondemocracies (China, Russia), using published empirical evidence to explore how financial resources influence governance. In democracies, US campaign finance, German party funding, and Indias electoral bonds amplify elite influence, openly eroding public trust by skewing policy toward wealthy interests. In nondemocracies, Chinas state enterprise patronage and Russias oligarch suppression strengthen legitimacy, yet hide vulnerabilities revealed by anticorruption campaigns and power struggles. The analysis argues that moneys corrosive impact is widespread but varies: democracies face evident legitimacy crises, while nondemocracies conceal underlying fragility. These findings highlight the need for reforms: increased transparency in democracies and wider power bases in nondemocracies, to mitigate moneys distorting effect on political authority.

Suggested Citation

  • Venkat Ram Reddy Ganuthula & Krishna Kumar Balaraman, 2025. "The Nexus of Money and Political Legitimacy: A Comparative Analysis of Democracies and Non-Democracies," Papers 2505.09128, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2505.09128
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.09128
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Scott Gehlbach & Alberto Simpser, 2015. "Electoral Manipulation as Bureaucratic Control," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(1), pages 212-224, January.
    2. Larry M. Bartels, 2016. "Unequal Democracy:The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 2, number 10831, December.
    3. Naughton, Barry J., 2018. "The Chinese Economy: Adaptation and Growth, second edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262534797, December.
    4. Larry M. Bartels, 2016. "The New Gilded Age," Introductory Chapters, in: Unequal Democracy:The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Princeton University Press.
    5. Gurvich, Evsey & Prilepskiy, Ilya, 2015. "The impact of financial sanctions on the Russian economy," Russian Journal of Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 359-385.
    6. McMenamin, Iain, 2013. "If Money Talks, What Does it Say?: Corruption and Business Financing of Political Parties," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199665709.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Venkat Ram Reddy Ganuthula & Krishna Kumar Balaraman, 2025. "The Triad of Modern Democracies: Money, Identity, and Information in Shaping Power and Legitimacy," Papers 2505.09124, arXiv.org.
    2. Komlos, John & Schubert, Hermann, 2019. "Les origines du triomphe de Donald Trump," Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, Association Recherche et Régulation, vol. 26.
    3. Lambert, Thomas, 2024. "Displaced Worker Angst and Far Right Populism," MPRA Paper 120483, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Komlos John, 2019. "Reaganomics: A Watershed Moment on the Road to Trumpism," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 16(1), pages 1-21, December.
    5. Marcel Preuss & Germ'an Reyes & Jason Somerville & Joy Wu, 2025. "Are Elites Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking? Evidence from MBA Students," Papers 2503.15443, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2025.
    6. Evelyne Huber & Itay Machtei & John D. Stephens, 2023. "Testing Theories of Redistribution: Structure of Inequality, Electoral Institutions, and Partisan Politics," LIS Working papers 854, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    7. John Komlos, 2021. "Macroeconomic Inequality from Reagan to Trump. Market Power, Wage Repression, Asset Price Inflation, and Industrial Decline," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 97(318), pages 450-453, September.
    8. Haoyang Liu & W. Ben McCartney & Rodney Ramcharan & Calvin Zhang & Xiaohan Zhang, 2025. "Household Finance Shapes Political Participation: Evidence from Mortgage Refinancing," Working Papers 2517, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, revised 03 Mar 2026.
    9. Jennifer Wolak & David A. M. Peterson, 2020. "The Dynamic American Dream," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 968-981, October.
    10. Cohn, Alain & Jessen, Lasse J. & Klašnja, Marko & Smeets, Paul, 2023. "Wealthy Americans and redistribution: The role of fairness preferences," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 225(C).
    11. Xuanye Zeng & Zhuoying Fu & Xin Deng & Dingde Xu, 2021. "The Impact of Livelihood Risk on Farmers of Different Poverty Types: Based on the Study of Typical Areas in Sichuan Province," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-18, August.
    12. Zamir Eyal, 2020. "Refounding Law and Economics: Behavioral Support for the Predictions of Standard Economic Analysis," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 16(2), pages 1-35, July.
    13. Florian Scheuer & Joel Slemrod, 2021. "Taxing Our Wealth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(1), pages 207-230, Winter.
    14. John Komlos, 2019. "Reaganomics: una línea divisoria," Tiempo y Economía, Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, vol. 6(1), pages 47-76.
    15. Andrés César & Guillermo Falcone & Pablo Garriga, 2022. "Robots, Exports and Top Income Inequality: Evidence for the U.S," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0307, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    16. Florian Scheuer & Joel Slemrod, 2020. "Taxation and the Superrich," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 189-211, August.
    17. Maxim Senkov & Arseniy Samsonov, 2024. "Should Politicians be Informed? Targeted Benefits and Heterogeneous Voters," Papers 2401.04273, arXiv.org.
    18. Richard Clark & Sarah Kreps & Adi Rao, 2025. "The political economy of reshoring: Evidence from the semiconductor industry," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 20(2), pages 1-14, February.
    19. Manuel Hensmans, 2021. "Exploring the dark and bright sides of Internet democracy: Ethos-reversing and ethos-renewing digital transformation," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/321232, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    20. Matthias Fatke, 2018. "Inequality Perceptions, Preferences Conducive to Redistribution, and the Conditioning Role of Social Position," Societies, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-14, October.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2505.09128. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.