Unevenly Unequal Responsiveness: Public Opinion and Redistributive Policy Shifts in Western Europe Since 2008

Abstract

Recent studies puzzle over why it is that democratically elected governments have not responded to rising inequality by engaging in more redistribution. While some scholars argue that low- and middle-income citizens have not responded to rising inequality in the way we would expect, others argue that policymakers are not responsive to the demands of these citizens. We argue that both solutions to the “lack-of-redistribution puzzle” leave something to be desired and that variation across policy domains sheds new light on the issues at stake in this debate. Based on an original 2019 survey replicating questions asked by the European Social Survey in 2008, we show that support for progressive income taxation and more egalitarian unemployment insurance has increased in most West European countries since 2008. Tax policy has moved in the same direction as public opinion, but unemployment policy has not. We conclude that public opinion should be conceived as a constraint on policymakers motivated by political-economy considerations rather than a driver of policy developments.