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Income, inequality, and the stability of democracy — Another look at the Lipset hypothesis

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  • Jung, Florian
  • Sunde, Uwe
Abstract
This paper studies the endogenous emergence of political regimes, in particular democracy, oligarchy and mass dictatorship, in societies in which productive resources are distributed unequally and institutions do not ensure political commitments. The political regime is shown to depend not only on income levels, but also, in particular, on resource inequality. The main results imply that under any economic environment a distribution of resources exists such that democracy is the political outcome. This distribution is independent of the particular income level if the income share generated by the poor is sufficiently large. On the other hand, there are distributions of resources for which democracy is infeasible in equilibrium regardless of the level of economic development. The model also delivers results on the stability of democracy. Variations in inequality across several dimensions due to unbalanced technological change, immigration or changes in the demographic structure affect the scope for democracy or may even lead to its breakdown. Among other historical examples, the results are consistent with the different political regimes that emerged in Germany after its unification in 1871.

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  • Jung, Florian & Sunde, Uwe, 2014. "Income, inequality, and the stability of democracy — Another look at the Lipset hypothesis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 52-74.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:35:y:2014:i:c:p:52-74
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2014.03.004
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    3. Raouf Boucekkine & Paolo Piacquadio & Fabien Prieur, 2015. "A Lipsetian Theory of Institutional Change," Working Papers hal-02797064, HAL.
    4. Michal Madr, 2016. "Economic Development as a Factor of Democratisation: Evidence from Post-Socialist Economies," MENDELU Working Papers in Business and Economics 2016-70, Mendel University in Brno, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    5. Boucekkine, Raouf & Piacquadio, Paolo G. & Prieur, Fabien, 2019. "A Lipsetian theory of voluntary power handover," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 269-291.
    6. Natalie Obergruber, 2018. "Microeconometric Analysis of Individual and Institutional Determinants of Education and Occupational Choice," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 80.
    7. Sajad Rahimian, 2021. "The Determinants of Democracy Revisited: An Instrumental Variable Bayesian Model Averaging Approach," Papers 2103.04255, arXiv.org.
    8. Vladim'ir Hol'y & Tom'av{s} Evan, 2021. "The Role of a Nation's Culture in the Country's Governance: Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Papers 2102.05411, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2021.
    9. Major G. Coleman, 2016. "At a Loss for Words: Measuring Racial Inequality in America," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 43(2), pages 177-192, June.
    10. Vladimír Holý & Tomáš Evan, 2022. "The role of a nation’s culture in the country’s governance: Stochastic frontier analysis," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 30(2), pages 507-520, June.
    11. Islam, Md. Rabiul & Madsen, Jakob B. & Raschky, Paul A., 2015. "Gold and silver mining in the 16th and 17th centuries, land titles and agricultural productivity," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 150-166.
    12. Raouf Boucekkine & Paolo Giovanni Piacquadio & Fabien Prieur, 2016. "A Lipsetian Theory of Democratization: Development, Education, Inequality, and Resources," CESifo Working Paper Series 6283, CESifo.
    13. Tridimas, George, 2015. "War, disenfranchisement and the fall of the ancient Athenian democracy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 102-117.
    14. Dorsch, Michael T. & Maarek, Paul, 2015. "Inefficient predation and political transitions," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 37-48.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Income; Democracy; Coalition formation; Factor endowments; Demographic structure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • H10 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - General

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