Abstract
AbstractIn 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.
Highlights
The promise of democracy rests on the premise that citizens participate in the democratic process and that they participate
We make a systematic effort to resolve the question of how political and economic inequality are related in rich democracies
Over the past three decades, income inequality has been rising in most rich democracies
Summary
The promise of democracy rests on the premise that citizens participate in the democratic process and that they participate . Declining turnout rates and a growing ‘participation gap’ (Dalton, 2017) between the rich and the poor are causing concern about a broken promise of democracy (Schlozman et al, 2012). Declining participation at first seems puzzling as studies taking a traditional socioeconomic resource approach on democratic participation unanimously show that individuals with more resources are more likely to vote (Brady et al, 1995; Verba, 1996; Gallego, 2015). Considering the increasing resources at the disposal of citizens across the world, one would expect more rather than less participation in politics. Existing studies in comparative political economy, suggest that it is not primarily individual resources that determine voter turnout but their distribution.
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