Voter Demand and Politics Of Redistribution - Does Democracy Heal Inequality?

Rising income inequality has been mitigated by public income redistribution in most highly developed countries during the past decades. According to the classical democratic model citizens can address governments and demand for an intervention into the distribution of market incomes. In this ideal model, ‘inacceptable’ disparities in the market income distribution can be healed by a political majority. This basic model has been developed further and enlarged by political factors. Explanations of redistribution from political sociology and economy assume that coalitions between middle class and the poor are necessary to put through demands for more equality. The poor resp. parties representing their interest in measures compensating the market income losses especially the poor had to endure in past are not powerful enough. So, the median voter is decisive for the political power necessary to build cross class coalitions of redistribution. Three points are decisive in that model: a) The political orientation and behavior of the median resp. the middle class voter; b) the political participation of the poor; c) the transmission of voter demand into politics. Recent debates doubt that governments respond to demand.

The paper will confront assumptions underlying the model with data on the changing political orientations of the median and poor voter/ class specific voter behavior, on party polarization and the ideological shift of left parties and on the institutional incentives for political participation. These questions will be discussed: Do middle class voters sympathize with politics for the poor or do they rather support coalitions with the affluent? Did left parties shift to the middle of the political left right-spectrum and did this make them successful in political competition? Is there congruence between voter demand and actual political programs? Data come from Luxembourg Income Study, the Comparative Manifesto Program and attitude surveys (ISSP, ESS).