A Theory of Redistribution in New Democracies: How Has Democracy Increased Income Disparity in Southern and Postcommunist Europe?
[Thesis]
Karakoç, Ekrem
Banaszak, Lee Ann
The Pennsylvania State University
2019
387 p.
Ph.D.
The Pennsylvania State University
2019
In most new democracies, rising inequality poses a challenge to conventional theories in democratization literature because these theories predict that democracies decreases inequality through its positive effects on social welfare programs toward the poor. To the contrary, I present evidence that inequality does not decrease after democratization and ask why is that democracies cannot generate income equality. Then I explore the determinants of inequality and offer three interrelated arguments that explain the paradox between democracy and inequality. I argue that low political participation by the poor and weak political party system institutionalization increases targeted social spending for electoral purposes, thus having regressive effect on inequality. Here I discuss the linkage between social groups and political parties in some cases going back to authoritarian era in underinstitutionalized party systems and how this leads political parties to use targeted spending, which favors some social groups at the expense of the poor. I adopt a multi-method technique to test the theory because it enables this study to process the causal relation as well as generalize its findings. In particular, I use large-N method and then two paired case studies. For the latter, I take two regions of Europe that have experienced democratization since the Third-Wave and adopt "most similar system" research design in Turkey and Spain in Southern Europe and the Czech Republic and Poland in the postcommunist Europe. iv TABLE