If not party mandates, then what? The determinants of legislative agendas

What determines changes in the focus of laws over time? Before turning to the impact of democratic mandates, this chapter examines alternative explanations focusing on globalization, the rise of regulatory politics and its effects on redistribution; social change and the emergence of post-materialism; friction and cognitive constraints resulting in punctuated equilibrium patterns of attention; and the hypothesis of a broadening of policy agendas leading governments to deal with a growing number of issues. Panel negative binomial regressions of data collected by the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) on legislative priorities in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK, confirm that further explanations are needed. Among the different explanations that we explore, only globalization seems to have some impact on legislative agendas in terms of the relative weight of regulatory and redistributive policies. These first tests set the landscape and provide guidance as to potential covariates to take into account when analysing the role of parties and party competition in the subsequent chapters.

Equality, Reciprocity, or Need? Mitigating Ethnocentric Bias in Policy Evaluation with Distributive Fairness

The literature on welfare chauvinism shows that ethnocentrism reduces support for outgroup redistribution. To limit bias, scholarship suggests framing policies universally or addressing beneficiary deservingness. However, policies to support disadvantaged groups and ensure equity cannot always be framed in universal terms. Moreover, dominant groups often hold minoritized groups to a deservingness double standard. Thus, we ask: what are effective ways of mollifying ethnocentric bias in policy evaluation? We argue that principles of distributive justice -- normative justifications for who should get what and why -- can reduce ethnocentric bias. We test through three experiments in Slovakia and with the Roma as the outgroup. Frames using the distributive principle of reciprocity reduce ethnocentric bias amongst majorities; conversely, frames centered around the principle of need garner minority support. Given salient anti-Roma prejudice, we consider our findings a floor. For less stigmatized outgroups, reciprocity frames may bolster support for redistributive policies even further.

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.

Poverty and inequality in the light of modern approaches to overcoming Russian poverty

The subject of the article is the phenomenon of poverty in light of the problems of excessive economic inequality, which is the main source of formation of Russian poverty, and indicative of institutional analysis which involves a critical revision of social-economic policy of the state instead of the official way of dealing with this problem without considering the reasons of its formation (targeting of poverty). The aim of the work is to update the cause-and-effect factors of poverty formation in Russia, the main of which is a critically high level of inequality with an assessment of the role, nature and causes of its causes. The hypothesis of the study is the thesis that the fight against poverty is ineffective based only on increasing the number and level of social payments and social programs, without taking into account the causes of poverty, thus not affecting any socio-economic processes for its formation. Meanwhile, both the indicative and institutional approach to the analysis of the main causes of poverty shows the dominant role of excessive inequality in the formation of the problem of Russian poverty. In turn, inequality is caused by the inefficiency of the state’s distributive and redistributive policies, caused by the lack of scientific conditionality and systematic political decisions.

Redistribution and beliefs about the source of income inequality

Previous literature demonstrates that beliefs about the determinants of income inequality play a major role in individual support for income redistribution. This study investigates how people form beliefs regarding the extent to which work versus luck determines income inequality. Specifically, I examine whether people form self-serving beliefs to justify supporting personally advantageous redistributive policies. I use a laboratory experiment where I directly measure beliefs and manipulate the incentives to engage in self-deception. I first replicate earlier results demonstrating that (1) people attribute income inequality to work when they receive a high income and to luck when they receive a low income and (2) their beliefs about the source of income inequality influence their preferences over redistributive policies. However, I do not find that people’s beliefs about the causes of income inequality are further influenced by self-serving motivations based on a desire to justify favorable redistributive policies. I conclude that, in my experiment, self-serving beliefs about the causes of income inequality are driven primarily by overconfidence and self-image concerns and not to justify favorable redistributive policies.

Political Budgetary Cycles in Autocratic Redistribution

While political budgetary cycles in democracies have been rigorously studied for the past several decades, surprisingly little is known about electorally motivated policy manipulation in authoritarian regimes. This study analyzes how dictators strategically change the priorities of autocratic policies to cultivate electoral dominance even when election results are predetermined. I argue that dictators spend more money on redistributive policies in election periods. Using budgetary spending data from 63 autocratic countries between 1972 and 2015, this paper presents cross-national evidence of the existence of an electoral cycle in autocratic redistribution. Analyzing Afrobarometer survey data from 18 African autocracies between 2008 and 2015, this study also finds that citizens’ evaluations of redistributive policy fluctuate according to the electoral calendar. These findings contribute to the literature on authoritarian politics by exploring macro- and micro-level mechanisms through which authoritarian rulers improvise policy manipulation to cultivate electoral dominance.

Do social investment policies reduce income inequality? An analysis of industrial countries

Scholars and policymakers who call for social investment (SI) policies hope that SI policies reduce income inequality and poverty, among other policy goals. Meanwhile, some others point out potentially less pro-poor effects of SI policies. There are relatively few cross-national studies that empirically examine the distributional effects of SI policies. The current study seeks to fill the gap by investigating the effects of SI policies on income inequality in OECD countries. The empirical analysis finds mixed results. Parental leave benefits reduce market income inequality, but other family support policies do not lessen inequality, and family allowances and paid leave (the length of generous leave) even increase it. The effects of some family policies are partly context-specific. In contexts where there are a large number of single-mother households, parental leave benefits reduce market income inequality. There is no stable evidence that education and active labour market policy (ALMP) reduce market income inequality. Education and ALMP, however, reduce disposable income inequality (even after controlling for left governments and Nordic countries). The article suggests that in countries with high education and/or ALMP spending, the skills of workers towards the lower end of the income distribution may be relatively high (even though their pre-tax and transfer income may be low), and it may make their income salvageable with redistributive policies. In this sense, SI policies and conventional redistributive policies may be complementary in reducing disposable income inequality.