Two New Tests of the Relationship Between Inequality and Political Engagement

Does inequality discourage political engagement? Previous studies have noted that people are less politically engaged in societies with higher income inequality. This cross-sectional association has been taken as evidence of a causal relationship, with inequality discouraging engagement by leading all but the wealthiest people to conclude that politics is not about them or their concerns. If correct, this interpretation suggests that the increasing inequality seen in many countries in recent decades has been driving down engagement, with potentially serious implications for the quality of democracy. Yet the association could be spurious, or due to reverse-causality. The very reason scholars care about political engagement is that they believe it has consequences for democracy and distribution; rather than inequality discouraging engagement, disengagement could foster inequality. Using multilevel models fitted to two measures of engagement from all five waves of the World/European Values Surveys, this paper re-assesses the thesis of a causal relationship running from inequality to disengagement, in two ways. First, I investigate whether the relationship holds not just cross-sectionally but also longitudinally. Second, I use an instrument for inequality to test whether the correlation between inequality and engagement holds even when ruling out reverse-causality. I find mixed evidence for a relationship over time, but a clear correlation when instrumenting for inequality. At least over the long run, then, it seems that unequal societies tend to develop less participatory politics.