Participation and Inequality in the U.S. States

• In Event: Inequality and Voting Behavior

Abstract

Contemporary democracies have experienced a dramatic rise in economic inequality (Pikkety 2014). Political scientists concur that this inequality largely reflects the degree of bias in citizen participation in politics. However, it is yet unclear which forms of participation are the key drivers of unequal policies (Blais, Dassonneville, and Kostelka 2020). Building on the existing literature, this paper theorizes and investigates the role of different participatory modes on the degree of economic inequality in the U.S. states. It draws on a novel data set of participatory inputs, economic trends, and public policies in the United States between 1980 and the present. Paying particular attention to the issues of causal inference and endogeneity, the empirical section employs state-of-the-art statistical techniques for time-series-cross-section data, leveraging both over-time and cross-state variation. The results yield critical insights for the understanding of political processes in liberal democracies in general, and the United States in particular.

Authors

• Filip Kostelka, European University Institute

• Lorenzo Crippa, University of Essex

• Philip James Swatton, Essex University