Inequality and Democratization

Ben W. Ansell is Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford, and co-editor of Comparative Political Studies. His work on education, democracy, and housing markets has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, World Politics, and International Organization. His book From the Ballot to the Blackboard (Cambridge, 2010) was awarded the 2011 William Riker Prize by the Political Economy Section of the American Political Science Association. David J. Samuels is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He is the coauthor of Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers (Cambridge, 2010); the author of Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil (Cambridge, 2003); and the co-editor of Decentralization and Democracy in Latin America (2004). His work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the British Journal of Political Science. He currently serves as co-editor of Comparative Political Studies.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Inequality, development, and distribution; 3. Actors and interests; 4. An elite-competition model of democratization; 5. Assessing the relationship between inequality and democratization; 6. Inequality and democratization: empirical extensions; 7. Democracy, inequality, and public spending: reassessing the evidence; 8. Democracy, redistribution, and preferences; 9. Conclusion.

'This gem of a book engages with one of the fundamental relationships in political economy: the relationship between democratization and inequality. The received wisdom is that inequality serves as a brake on democratization because the autocratic elites fear the redistributive demands of the poor median voter. Ansell and Samuels offer an illuminating new approach - the elite-competition approach - and rigorously argue that rising income inequality, in fact, fosters democratization as emerging economic groups demand political influence to insure against the old autocratic elite's power to expropriate their income and assets. The book is a major contribution to the field of political economy that will inspire and challenge researchers and students alike.' Toke Aidt, University of Cambridge