The Socio-Economic Foundations of Authoritarianism: Economic Inequality As a Source of Deference for Authority (1989-2022)

Authoritarian leaders and parties have emerged all over the world during the last decades. Although both the media and scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the consequences of authoritarianism for liberal societies, we still know surprisingly little about its causes. Drawing on repeated cross-sections of surveys collected over the last four decades, this article tests whether economic inequality breeds authoritarianism. Using random effects within and between and country fixed-effects and slopes models, main results show how deference for authority is deeply embedded within societies’ historical levels of economic inequality. Across countries, persistent levels of economic inequality point toward a structural driver of authoritarianism. Over time, rising inequality within countries predicts changes in deference for authority, suggesting a divergence effect across income-based lines. Deeper analyses reveal, however, that the conditional effect of economic inequality over-time is largely driven by the worse-off. These results, stable across various modeling and sample choices, contribute to a growing scholarship trying to ascertain both the social sources of authoritarianism and the consequences of persistent levels of economic inequality.