Inequality, macroeconomic performance and political polarization: a panel analysis of 20 advanced democracies

Christian R. Proaño, Juan Carlos Peña and Thomas Saalfeld

Review of Social Economy, 2024, vol. 82, issue 3, 396-429

Abstract: This paper investigates the macroeconomic and social determinants of voting behavior, and especially of political polarization – defined here as the increasing electoral success of far-right and far-left parties – in 20 advanced countries using annual data from 1970 to 2016 and covering 291 parliamentary elections. Our analysis indicates that the link between income inequality and political polarization appears to have significantly changed over the last 20 years. Indeed, we find that both average net income inequality, as well as the bottom 10% income share are statistically linked to the recent success of far-right parties (but not of far-left parties), while the top 10% or top 20% income shares are not. The link of income inequality and political polarization, and in particular the increasing success of far-right parties, thus seems to be based on the deterioration of the relative economic position especially of the poorest fraction of the population.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00346764.2022.2047768 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:82:y:2024:i:3:p:396-429

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RRSE20

DOI: 10.1080/00346764.2022.2047768

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Social Economy is currently edited by Wilfred Dolfsma and John Davis

More articles in Review of Social Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().