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44 results

Page 1 of 3

  • Copyright page

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp vi-vi
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  • 1 - The Political Puzzle of Rising Inequality

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp 1-26
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  • Summary

    Since the 1990s, economic inequality has risen in just about every affluent democracy in North America and Western Europe. But the last three decades have also been characterized by falling or stagnating levels of state-led economic redistribution. These two contemporaneous trends pose a puzzle for students of political economy. Why have democratically accountable governments not done more to compensate the large majority of citizens with low and middle income for rising top-income shares? Our introductory chapter begins by describing this puzzle of rising inequality and noting some nuances that most accounts regularly miss. We then examine two groups of explanations for the puzzle of rising inequality: one set that focuses on voters and their demands for redistribution, and another that focuses on elites and unequal representation that is biased against less-affluent citizens. This volume seeks to contribute to explaining the puzzle of rising inequality by bringing these two groups of explanations into dialogue with each other. We describe the contributions of the individual chapters to these efforts and suggest directions for future research.

  • Index

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp 359-365
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  • Bibliography

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp 325-358
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  • Tables

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp xiii-xiv
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  • Part II - Political Inequality and Representation

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp 131-216
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  • Contents

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp vii-viii
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  • Acknowledgments

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp xix-xx
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  • Contributors

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp xv-xviii
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  • Figures

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp ix-xii
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  • 2 - Unequal Responsiveness and Government Partisanship in Northwest Europe

  • from Part I - Government Responsiveness
  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp 29-53
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  • Summary

    This paper pools datasets on policy responsiveness to public opinion in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. Following the empirical strategy set out by Gilens (2012), we show that the policy outputs correspond much better to the preferences of affluent citizens than to the preferences of low- and middle-income citizens in all four countries. We proceed to explore how government partisanship conditions unequal responsiveness. In so doing, we distinguish between economic/welfare issues and other issues and we also distinguish between the period before 1998 and the period since 1998. Our findings suggest that policymaking under Left-leaning governments was relatively more responsive to low- and middle-income citizens in the economic/welfare domain before 1998, but this was not true for other policy domains before 1998 and it is no longer true for the economic/welfare domain. We conclude with some general reflections on the implications of our empirical findings for the literature on mechanisms of unequal representation in liberal democracies.

  • Part III - Voters and Demand for Redistribution

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp 217-324
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  • Part I - Government Responsiveness

  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, Jonas Pontusson, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Unequal Democracies
    Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023, pp 27-130
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Unequal Democracies
  • Public Policy, Responsiveness, and Redistribution in an Era of Rising Economic Inequality
  • Edited by Noam Lupu, Jonas Pontusson
  • Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023
  • While economic inequality has risen in every affluent democracy in North America and Western Europe, the last three decades have also been characterized by falling or stagnating levels of state-led economic redistribution. Why have democratically accountable governments not done more to distribute top-income shares to citizens with low- and middle-income? Unequal Democracies offers answers to this question, bringing together contributions that focus on voters and their demands for redistribution with contributions on elites and unequal representation that is biased against less-affluent citizens. While large and growing bodies of research have developed around each of these perspectives, this volume brings them into rare dialogue. Chapters also incorporate analyses that center exclusively on the United States and those that examine a broader set of advanced democracies to explore the uniqueness of the American case and its contribution to comparative perspectives. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

  • Paper Stones Revisited: Class Voting, Unionization and the Electoral Decline of the Mainstream Left

  • Line Rennwald, Jonas Pontusson
  • Journal:
    Perspectives on Politics / Volume 19 / Issue 1 / March 2021
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    12 March 2020, pp. 36-54
    Print publication:
    March 2021

  • Relying on post-election surveys, we analyze how class and union membership condition voters’ abandonment of mainstream Left parties and the alternatives chosen by former mainstream-Left voters in the period 2001–2015. Inspired by Przeworski and Sprague’s Paper Stones (1986), our analysis shows that Left parties face a trade-off between mobilizing workers and other voters and that unionization renders workers more loyal to Left parties that mobilize non-workers. By contrast, unionization does not render non-workers more loyal to Left parties that mobilize workers. Union membership increases the likelihood that workers who abandon the mainstream Left continue to vote. It also increases the likelihood that voters abandon the mainstream Left in favor of radical Left parties rather than Center-Right parties. Finally, we show that workers are more likely to abandon mainstream Left parties in favor of radical Right parties than non-workers and that union membership does not affect their propensity to do so. We conclude that reversing the decline of working-class organization should be a long-term objective of mainstream Left parties.

  • Solidaristic Unionism and Support for Redistribution in Contemporary Europe

  • Nadja Mosimann, Jonas Pontusson
  • Journal:
    World Politics / Volume 69 / Issue 3 / July 2017
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    23 May 2017, pp. 448-492
    Print publication:
    July 2017

  • Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–14), this article explores the effect of union membership on support for redistribution. The authors hypothesize that the wage-bargaining practices of unions promote egalitarian distributive norms, which lead union members to support redistribution, and that this effect is strongest among high-wage workers. Consistent with the authors’ expectations, the empirical analysis shows that the solidarity effect of union membership is strongest when unions encompass a very large share of the labor force or primarily organize low-wage workers. The authors also show that low-wage workers have become a significantly less important union constituency in many European countries over the time period covered by the analysis.

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