Income Shocks, Inequality, and Democracy*

Kotschy, Rainer; Sunde, Uwe

doi:10.1111/sjoe.12398

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Perhaps one of the most influential versions of this classic argument is Acemoglu and Robinson's (2001) theory, in which negative shocks reduce opportunity costs of revolt, and hence induce autocrats to make economic concessions to prevent revolution. There is empirical evidence that droughts or floods, for example, can operate as potential democratizing devices (Aidt and Leon, 2016;Brückner and Ciccone, 2011), and they may be more important than slow-moving economic transformations, although their effect is probably highly conditional to preexisting characteristics, such as the level of inequality (Kotschy and Sunde, 2019).…”

Section: Theory: Pandemics and Democratic Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pandemics meet democracy. Experimental evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Spain

Amat¹,

Arenas²,

Falcó-Gimeno³

et al. 2020

Preprint

168

129

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The COVID-19 outbreak poses an unprecedented challenge for contemporary democracies. Despite the global scale of the problem, the response has been mainly national, and global coordination has been so far extremely weak. All over the world governments are making use of exceptional powers to enforce lockdowns, often sacrificing civil liberties and profoundly altering the pre-existing power balance, which nurtures fears of an authoritarian turn. Relief packages to mitigate the economic consequences of the lockdowns are being discussed, and there is little doubt that the forthcoming recession will have important distributive consequences. In this paper we study citizens' responses to these democratic dilemmas. We present results from a set of survey experiments run in Spain from March 20 to March 28, together with longitudinal evidence from a panel survey fielded right before and after the virus outbreak. Our findings reveal a strong preference for a national as opposed to a European/international response. The national bias is much stronger for the COVID-19 crisis than for other global problems, such as climate change or international terrorism. We also find widespread demand for strong leadership, willingness to give up individual freedom, and a sharp increase in support for technocratic governance. As such, we document the initial switch in mass public preferences towards technocratic and authoritarian government caused by the pandemic. We discuss to what extent this crisis may contribute to a shift towards a new, self-enforcing political equilibrium.

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Section: Theory: Pandemics and Democratic Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pandemics meet democracy. Experimental evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Spain

Amat¹,

Arenas²,

Falcó-Gimeno³

et al. 2020

Preprint

168

129

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…If it is the case and this finding holds on the country level, then wealthier countries should exhibit more patience which is in fact the case as demonstrated by Sunde et al (2021). Relatedly, Kotschy and Sunde (2021) show that income shocks are conducive to changes in political institutions and hence affect the political regime, though the effect depends also on the level of inequality. As mentioned earlier, Acemoglu et al (2019) find that democracy causes economic development, so one may draw the conclusion that democracy implies patience through rising income.…”

Section: Literature Review and Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 82%

Patient democracies?

Kiss

Horn

Khayouti

2022

Preprint

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There is growing evidence that schooling and income associate positively with democracy and patience, suggesting a potential link between democracy and patience. We test if indeed the political regime of countries associates with the average patience of their citizens. We document a highly significant positive raw association between the level of democracy and patience for all the political regime indices that we use. Considering regional controls, geographical conditions and culture (proxied by religion) only diminishes the strength of the association slightly. However, economic development and schooling have a mediating role in the relationship between patience and political regime.JEL: code, D02, D12

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“…Sub-goal 2) Participation, focuses on autonomy and agency -in the economy and at work. Measures of the overall quality of democracy are useful since democratic quality is related to income inequality (Kotschy and Sunde 2021). However, we suggest that measures of democracy should go beyond representative democracy to economic democracy.…”

Section: Sustainable Work and Economic Degrowth-a New Set Of Indicators For Sdgmentioning

confidence: 96%

From “Decent work and economic growth” to “Sustainable work and economic degrowth”: a new framework for SDG 8

Kreinin

Aigner

2021

Empirica

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The sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) have successfully raised awareness and built momentum for taking collective action, while also remaining uncritical of the central causes of the environmental crises – economic growth, inequality, and overconsumption in the Global North. We analyse SDG 8 “Decent Work and Economic Growth” from the perspective of strong sustainability – as phenomena, institutions and ideologies – and find that it does not fit the criteria of strong sustainability. Based on this observation, we propose a novel framework for SDG8 in line with strong sustainability and the latest scientific research, “Sustainable Work and Economic Degrowth”, including a first proposal for new sub-goals, targets and indicators. This encompasses an integrated systems approach to achieving the SDGs’ overalls goals – a sustainable future for present and future generations. The key novel contributions of the paper include new indicators to measure societies’ dependence on economic growth, to ensure the provisioning of welfare independent of economic growth.

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Income Shocks, Inequality, and Democracy*

Cited by 15 publications

References 59 publications

Pandemics meet democracy. Experimental evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Spain

Pandemics meet democracy. Experimental evidence from the COVID-19 crisis in Spain

Patient democracies?

From “Decent work and economic growth” to “Sustainable work and economic degrowth”: a new framework for SDG 8

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