Unequal Democracies

Noam Lupu is Associate Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Party Brands in Crisis (2016) and co-editor of Campaigns and Voters in Developing Democracies (2019). He has received numerous awards for his publications and three Emerging Scholar awards from the American Political Science Association. Jonas Pontusson is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Geneva. He has held previous appointments at Cornell and Princeton University. Over the last six years, he has directed the research program “Unequal Democracies,” funded by the European Research Council.

• 1. The political puzzle of rising inequality Noam Lupu and Jonas Pontusson; Part I. Government Responsiveness: 2. Unequal responsiveness and government partisanship in Northwest Europe Ruben Berge Mathisen, Wouter Schakel, Svenja Hense, Lea Elsässer, Mikael Persson and Jonas Pontusson; 3. Democracy, class interests, and redistribution: what do the data say? Mads Andreas Elkjær and Torben Iversen; 4. Measuring political inequality Larry M. Bartels; 5. Why so little sectionalism in the contemporary United States? The under-representation of place-based economic interests Jacob S. Hacker, Paul Pierson and Sam Zacher; Part II. Political Inequality and Representation: 6. On the mechanisms behind unequal representation in legislatures Michael Becher and Daniel Stegmueller; 7. How do the educated govern? Evidence from Spanish mayors Marta Curto-Grau and Aina Gallego; 8. Working-class officeholding in the OECD Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu; 9. Political participation and unequal representation: Addressing the endogeneity problem Ruben Berge Mathisen and Yvette Peters; Part III. Voters and Demand for Redistribution: 10. Fairness reasoning and demand for redistribution Charlotte Cavaillé; 11. The news media and the politics of inequality in advanced democracies J Scott Matthews, Timothy Hicks and Alan M. Jacobs; 12. Deflecting from racism: local talk radio conversations about the murder of George Floyd Katherine J. Cramer; 13. Class and social policy representation Macarena Ares and Silja Häusermann; Bibliography; Index.

'Why have advanced democracies so broadly failed to address the growth of economic inequality? This rich volume brings together a wide range of leading scholars to explore the roles of citizens, elites, government policymakers, and the mass media. This is a vital contribution at a time when many citizens are disillusioned with their governments and, perhaps, with democracy itself.' Martin Gilens, University of California, Los Angeles