Full Citation

Title: Bureaucratic Capacity and Class Voting: Evidence from Across the World and the United States.

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2015

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: Why does income influence vote choice in some places and not others? We argue that a countrys ability to tax the income and assets of wealthy citizens is critical to whether politicians will mobilize citizens using fiscal policy. While most theories of redistributive politics assume that elected officials can deliver on promises of redistribution, in fact across contemporary democracies, the potential tax exposure of the relatively wealthy varies considerably. Politicians can, and do, appeal to relatively poor using redistributive platforms that take many forms. However, politicians promises to low-income citizens only credibly threaten the interests of high-income citizens if the state has the capacity to tax income and assets. In the absence of a credible redistributive threat, politicians are less likely to mobilize people in ways that allow income to influence vote choice. We show that bureaucratic capacity increases voting along class lines in contemporary democracies. We also explore sub-national variation in class voting in the U.S. in the mid-1930s at a time when the party system was less nationalized than it is today. During this period, class influenced political preferences more in states where taxes comprised a greater proportion of state revenues.

Url: https://www.sais-jhu.edu/sites/default/files/KasaraSuryanarayan_SAIS.pdf

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Kasara, Kimuli; Suryanarayan, Pavithra

Conference Name: Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association

Publisher Location: San Francisco, CA

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Poverty and Welfare

Countries: