{"title":"Class versus Identity: Candidates' Race and the Inequality–Redistribution Nexus","authors":"Konstantinos Matakos, Dimitrios Xefteris","doi":"10.1561/100.00018138","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Despite what the theory predicts, supply of redistributive policies does not always respond to rising inequality. We argue that redistribution reacts to changes in inequality, as long as the economy is not overshadowed by non-economic issues during the elections. To this end we construct a unique data set — where we estimate the race of candidates competing in all elections for U.S. state legislatures since 1980 — and show that the share of racially differentiated electoral contests has a disentangling effect on the inequality–redistribution link: when there are few (many) racially differentiated electoral contests, redistribution is (not) found to be sensitive to changes in inequality.","PeriodicalId":51622,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","volume":"15 1","pages":"401-447"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2020-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1561/100.00018138","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Quarterly Journal of Political Science","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00018138","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
Despite what the theory predicts, supply of redistributive policies does not always respond to rising inequality. We argue that redistribution reacts to changes in inequality, as long as the economy is not overshadowed by non-economic issues during the elections. To this end we construct a unique data set — where we estimate the race of candidates competing in all elections for U.S. state legislatures since 1980 — and show that the share of racially differentiated electoral contests has a disentangling effect on the inequality–redistribution link: when there are few (many) racially differentiated electoral contests, redistribution is (not) found to be sensitive to changes in inequality.
期刊介绍:
In the last half-century, social scientists have engaged in a methodologically focused and substantively far-reaching mission to make the study of politics scientific. The mutually reinforcing components in this pursuit are the development of positive theories and the testing of their empirical implications. Although this paradigm has been associated with many advances in the understanding of politics, no leading journal of political science is dedicated primarily to the publication of positive political science.