Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T03:28:42.658Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

When Does Income Inequality Cause Polarization?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2021

Jacob R. Gunderson Open the ORCID record for Jacob R. Gunderson [Opens in a new window]
Jacob R. Gunderson*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scholars have long been concerned with the implications of income inequality for democracy. Conventional wisdom suggests that high income inequality is associated with political parties taking polarized positions as the left advocates for increased redistribution while the right aims to entrench the position of economic elites. This article argues that the connection between party positions and income inequality depends on how party bases are sorted by income and the issue content of national elections. It uses data from European national elections from 1996 to 2016 to show that income inequality has a positive relationship with party polarization on economic issues when partisans are sorted with respect to income and when economic issues are relatively salient in elections. When these factors are weak, however, the author finds no relationship between income inequality and polarization.

Keywords

party polarizationinequalityissue saliencepolitical partiesEuropean politics
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 1315 - 1332
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abou-Chadi, T, Green-Pedersen, C and Mortensen, PB (2020) Parties’ policy adjustments in response to changes in issue salience. West European Politics 43(4), 749–771.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, J (2001) A theory of spatial competition with biased voters: party policies viewed temporally and comparatively. British Journal of Political Science 31(1), 121–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarez, RM and Nagler, J (2004) Party system compactness: measurement and consequences. Political Analysis 12(1), 46–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, CJ and Beramendi, P (2008) Income, inequality, and electoral participation. In Anderson, CJ and Beramendi, P (eds), Democracy, Inequality, and Representation: A Comparative Perspective. New York: Russel Sage Foundation, pp. 278–311.Google Scholar
Aristotle (1998) Politics. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Armingeon, K et al. (2018) Comparative Political Data Set 1960–2016. Bern: Institute of Political Science, University of Berne.Google Scholar
Bakker, R et al. (2015) Measuring party positions in Europe: the Chapel Hill Expert Survey trend file, 1999–2010. Party Politics 21(1), 143–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakker, R et al. (2014) Anchoring the experts: using vignettes to compare party ideology across countries. Research and Politics 1(3), 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barberá, P et al. (2019) Who leads? Who follows? Measuring issue attention and agenda setting by legislators and the mass public using social media data. American Political Science Review 113(4), 883–901.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bartolini, S (2000) The Political Mobilization of the European Left, 1860–1980: The Class Cleavage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beramendi, P (2015) Constrained partisanship and economic outcomes. In Beramendi, P, Hausermann, S, Kitschelt, H and Kriesi, H (eds), The Politics of Advanced Capitalism. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 333–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bormann, N-C and Golder, M (2013) Democratic electoral systems around the world, 1946–2011. Electoral Studies 32, 360–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braumoeller, BF (2004) Hypothesis testing and multiplicative interaction terms. International Organization 58, 807–820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Budge, I (2000) Expert judgments of party policy positions: uses and limitations in political research. European Journal of Political Research 37(1), 103–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, G (1990) Centripetal and centrifugal incentives in electoral systems. American Journal of Political Science 34(4), 903–935.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croissant, Y and Millo, G (2019) Panel Data Econometrics with R. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Google Scholar
Curini, L and Hino, A (2012) Missing links in party-system polarization: how institutions and voters matter. The Journal of Politics 74(2), 460–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dalton, RJ (2008) The quantity and the quality of party systems: party system polarization, its measurement, and its consequences. Comparative Political Studies 41(7), 899–920.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
European Social Survey Cumulative File, ESS 1-7 (2016) Data file edition 1.0. NSD (Norwegian Centre for Research Data, Norway). Data archive and distributor of ESS data for ESS REIC.Google Scholar
Ezrow, L (2008) Parties’ policy programmes and the dog that didn't bark: no evidence that proportional systems promote extreme party positioning. British Journal of Political Science 38(3), 479–497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenzl, M (2018) Income inequality and party (de)polarisation. West European Politics 41(6), 1262–1281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finseraas, H (2008) Income inequality and demand for redistribution: a multilevel analysis of European public opinion. Scandinavian Political Studies 32(1), 94–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, MN (1992) The decline of cleavage politics. In Franklin, MN, Mackie, T and Valen, H (eds), Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 383–405.Google Scholar
Garand, JC (2010) Income inequality, party polarization, and roll-call voting in the U.S. Senate. The Journal of Politics 72(4), 1109–1128.Google Scholar
Gemenis, K (2013) What to do (and not to do) with the comparative manifestos project data. Political Studies 61(S1), 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, S (2004) Social identity theory and party identification. Social Science Quarterly 85(1), 136–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gunderson, JR (2021) “Replication Data for: When Does Income Inequality Cause Polarization?”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SXLSXE, Harvard Dataverse, V1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Han, SM (2015) Income inequality, electoral systems and party polarisation. European Journal of Political Research 54(3), 582–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hazan, RY (1997) Centre Parties: Polarization and Competition in European Parliamentary Democracies. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Hobolt, SB and Tilley, J (2016) Fleeing the centre: the rise of challenger parties in the aftermath of the euro crisis. West European Politics 39(5), 971–991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooghe, L and Marks, G (2009) A postfunctionalist theory of European integration: from permissive consensus to constraining dissensus. British Journal of Political Science 39(1), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooghe, L and Marks, G (2018) Cleavage theory meets Europe's crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the transnational cleavage. Journal of European Public Policy 25(1), 109–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huddy, L, Bankert, A and Davies, C (2018) Expressive versus instrumental partisanship in multiparty European systems. Political Psychology 39, 173–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inglehart, R (1977) The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins, SP (2015) World income inequality database: an assessment of WIID and SWIID. Journal of Economic Inequality 13(4), 629–671.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, H, Powell, BJ and Fording, RC (2010) Electoral systems, party systems, and ideological representation: an analysis of distortion in Western democracies. Comparative Politics 42(2), 167–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitschelt, H (1995) The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Knutsen, O (2006) Class Voting in Western Europe: A Comparative Longitudinal Study. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Kriesi, H et al. (2008) West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, FE (2009) Beyond Ideology. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenz, GS (2012) Follow the Leader? How Voters Respond to Politicians’ Policies and Performance. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levendusky, M (2010) The Partisan Sort: How Liberals Became Democrats and Conservatives Became Republicans. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lipset, SM (1981) Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Lipset, SM and Rokkan, S (1967) Cleavage structures, party systems and voter alignments. In Lipset, SM and Rokkan, S (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York: Free Press, pp. 3–64.Google Scholar
Madison, J (1961) No. 10: the same subject continued. In Rossiter, C (ed.), The Federalist Papers, New York: New American Library, pp. 71–79.Google Scholar
McCarty, N, Poole, KT and Rosenthal, H (2006) Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Meltzer, AH and Richard, SF (1981) A rational theory of the size of government. Journal of Political Economy 89(5), 914–927.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oesch, D and Rennwald, L (2018) Electoral competition in Europe's new tripolar political space: class voting for the left, centre-right, and radical right. European Journal of Political Research 57, 783–807.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Østby, G (2008) Polarization, horizontal inequalities and violent civil conflict. Journal of Peace Research 45(2), 143–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piketty, T (2014) Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polk, J et al. (2017) Explaining the salience of anti-elitism and reducing political corruption for political parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data. Research & Politics 4(1), 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pontusson, J and Rueda, D (2008) Inequality as a source of political polarization: a comparative analysis of twelve OECD countries. In Beramendi, P and Anderson, CJ (eds), Democracy, Inequality, and Representation, New York: Russel Sage Foundation, pp. 312–353.Google Scholar
Pontusson, J and Rueda, D (2010) The politics of inequality: voter mobilization and left parties in advanced industrial states. Comparative Political Studies 43(6), 675–705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, EN and Tucker, JA (2014) Revisiting electoral volatility in post-communist countries. New data, new results and new approaches. British Journal of Political Science 44, 123–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, JM (2007) The statistical analysis of roll-call data: a cautionary tale. Legislative Studies Quarterly 32(3), 341–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rovny, J (2013) Where do radical right parties stand? Position blurring in multidimensional competition. European Political Science Review 5(1), 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rovny, J and Polk, J (2019) New wine in old bottles: explaining the dimensional structure of European party systems. Party Politics 25(1), 12–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, G (1976) Parties and Party Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Solt, F (2008) Economic inequality and democratic political engagement. American Journal of Political Science 52(1), 48–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solt, F (2010) Does economic inequality depress electoral participation? Testing the Schattschneider hypothesis. Political Behavior 32(2), 285–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solt, F (2016) The standardized world income inequality database. Social Science Quarterly 97(5), 1265–1281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steenbergen, MR and Marks, G (2007) Evaluating expert judgments. European Journal of Political Research 46(3), 347–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, F (2008) Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, F, Brown, G and Mancini, L (2010) Monitoring and measuring horizontal inequalities. Oxford: Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity.Google Scholar
Stoll, H (2010) Elite-level conflict salience and dimensionality in Western Europe: concepts and empirical findings. West European Politics 33(3), 445–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tavits, M and Potter, JD (2015) The effect of inequality and social identity on party strategies. American Journal of Political Science 59(3), 744–758.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (www.cses.org). CSES MODULE 1 FULL RELEASE [dataset]. 15 December 2015 version. doi:10.7804/cses.module1.2015-12-15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (www.cses.org). CSES MODULE 2 FULL RELEASE [dataset]. 15 December 2015 version. doi:10.7804/cses.module2.2015-12-15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (www.cses.org). CSES MODULE 3 FULL RELEASE [dataset]. 15 December 2015 version. doi:10.7804/cses.module3.2015-12-15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (www.cses.org). CSES MODULE 4 FULL RELEASE [dataset and documentation]. 29 May 2018 version. doi:10.7804/cses.module4.2018-05-29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winkler, H (2019) The effect of income inequality on political polarization: evidence from European regions, 2002–2014. Economics & Politics 31(2), 1–26.Google Scholar
Wlezien, C (2005) On the salience of political issues: the problem with ‘most important problem’. Electoral Studies 24(4), 555–579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Gunderson supplementary material

Gunderson supplementary material

Download Gunderson supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 460 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Gunderson Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/SXLSXE
Link