People are more tolerant of inequality when it is expressed in terms of individuals rather than groups at the top

Despite the ever-growing economic gap between the very wealthy and the rest of the population, support for redistributive policies tends to be low. This research tested whether people’s tolerance of inequality differs when it is represented in terms of a successful individual versus a group of people at the top of the economic ladder. We propose that drawing people’s attention to wealthy individuals undermines support for redistribution by leading people to believe that the rich person’s wealth is well deserved. Across eight studies (n = 2,800), survey participants rated unequal distributions of resources as more fair when presented with an individual, rather than a group, at the top of the distribution. Participants also expressed lower support for redistributive policies after considering inequality represented by successful individuals compared to groups. This effect was driven by people’s different attributions for individual versus group success. Participants thought that individuals at the top were more deserving of their successes and, in turn, were less likely to support redistribution when inequality was represented by individual success. These findings suggest that support for inequality, and policies to reduce it, may depend on who people are led to consider when they think about the top of the economic distribution.

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The Political Representation of Economic Interests

World Politics ◽

10.1017/s0043887119000224 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 72 (2) ◽

pp. 254-290 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Mads Andreas Elkjær ◽

Torben Iversen

Keyword(s):

Public Opinion ◽

Political Representation ◽

The Political ◽

Economic Interests ◽

Data Set ◽

Global Capital ◽

Redistributive Policies ◽

Democratic State ◽

Class Power ◽

The Rich

ABSTRACTRising inequality has caused concerns that democratic governments are no longer responding to majority demands, an argument the authors label the subversion of democracy model (sdm). The sdm comes in two forms: one uses public opinion data to show that policies are strongly biased toward the preferences of the rich; the other uses macrolevel data to show that governments aren’t responding to rising inequality. This article critically reassesses the sdm, points to potential biases, and proposes solutions that suggest a different interpretation of the data, which the authors label the representative democracy model (rdm). After testing the sdm against the rdm on public opinion data and on a new data set on fiscal policy, they find that middle-class power has remained remarkably strong over time, even as inequality has risen. The authors conclude that the rich have little influence on redistributive policies, and that the democratic state is apparently not increasingly constrained by global capital.

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The Structure of Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution

American Political Science Review ◽

10.1017/s0003055411000128 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 105 (2) ◽

pp. 316-336 ◽

Cited By ~ 194

Author(s):

NOAM LUPU ◽

JONAS PONTUSSON

Keyword(s):

Low Income ◽

Lower Half ◽

Social Spending ◽

Present Survey ◽

Middle Income ◽

Redistributive Policies ◽

Preferences For Redistribution ◽

The Poor ◽

The Rich ◽

Advanced Capitalist

Against the current consensus among comparative political economists, we argue that inequality matters for redistributive politics in advanced capitalist societies, but it is the structure of inequality, not the level of inequality, that matters. Our theory posits that middle-income voters will be inclined to ally with low-income voters and support redistributive policies when the distance between the middle and the poor is small relative to the distance between the middle and the rich. We test this proposition with data from 15 to 18 advanced democracies and find that both redistribution and nonelderly social spending increase as the dispersion of earnings in the upper half of the distribution increases relative to the dispersion of earnings in the lower half of the distribution. In addition, we present survey evidence on preferences for redistribution among middle-income voters that is consistent with our theory and regression results indicating that left parties are more likely to participate in government when the structure of inequality is characterized by skew.

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Individual versus group success in round robin tournament of an ability-based two-player game

10.24124/2018/58855 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jonathan Nyantakyi

Keyword(s):

Round Robin ◽

Versus Group ◽

Player Game ◽

Group Success

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Economic Origins of Democratic Breakdown? The Redistributive Model and the Postcolonial State

Perspectives on Politics ◽

10.1017/s1537592714000875 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 353-374 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Dan Slater ◽

Benjamin Smith ◽

Gautam Nair

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Time Series Data ◽

Series Data ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Democratic Breakdown ◽

Fine Grained ◽

Correlative Analysis ◽

Redistributive Policies ◽

Redistributive Taxation ◽

The Rich

From Aristotle to Acemoglu and Robinson, scholars have argued that democracy possesses powerful redistributive impulses, and imperils itself accordingly. We challenge the validity of the redistributive model of democratic breakdown in the postcolonial world—the only cases where democracies have collapsed since World War II—because its assumptions regarding state power are questionable or even inapplicable in postcolonial settings. Our correlative analysis of cross-sectional time series data from 139 countries between 1972 and 2007 indicates that, contrary to the expectations of the redistributive model, redistributive taxation is negatively associated with the incidence of military coups and the likelihood of democratic breakdown. Furthermore, authoritarian takeovers do not appear systematically to result in reduced redistribution from the rich. More fine-grained historical evidence from Southeast Asia—a region where the redistributive model should be especially likely to hold true—further affirms that authoritarian seizures of power are neither inspired by successful redistributive policies nor followed by their reversal. Taken together, these quantitative and qualitative data offer significant support for our central theoretical claim: contemporary democratic breakdowns have political origins in weak states, not economic origins in class conflict.

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Higher Inequality Increases the Gap in the Perceived Merit of the Rich and Poor

Social Psychology Quarterly ◽

10.1177/0190272517711919 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 80 (3) ◽

pp. 243-253 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Nicholas Heiserman ◽

Brent Simpson

Keyword(s):

Economic Inequality ◽

Indirect Evidence ◽

Online Experiment ◽

Redistributive Policies ◽

Income Inequalities ◽

The Rich

The rewards people receive are often taken as indirect evidence of their merit. We outline an argument that addresses how the magnitude of macrolevel income inequalities affects perceptions of the distribution of merit in a society. We propose that higher levels of economic inequality will lead to perceptions of greater differences in merit such that societies with higher inequality will be characterized by a larger “merit gap,” namely, larger differences in the perceived merit of the rich and poor. We test these arguments using an online experiment that manipulated the level of inequality (high vs. low) in an anonymized society. Participants perceived a larger merit gap in high versus low inequality societies. Our arguments and findings have implications for attitudes about inequality and redistributive policies.

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