Voter Demand and Politics of Redistribution - Does Democracy Correct Market-Inequality?

Rising income inequality partly has been mitigated by public income redistribution in most highly developed countries during the past decades. However, a widening market income distribution not automatically creates government response. In a democracy, of course, citizens can address governments and demand an intervention into the distribution of market incomes. Disparities of market income distribution could be healed by a political majority. However, as the Median-Voter model and other explanations of redistribution from political sociology and economy pointed out, the poor need coalitions with the middle class to put through their demand 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 should constitute political power within cross class coalitions of redistribution. Is this really so? Moreover, social scientists pointed to the fact that only political factors transfer voter demand into the political system. So class specific participation and the way, parties represent different political cleavages and transit their demand, are decisive steps constitution politics of redistribution.

The paper to be presented wants to confront the assumptions underlying the model with data on political behavior of the median and the poor voter, 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).