This course focuses on the theme of "Inequality and Democracy."
Distributional issues are at the core of the study of politics. Since Laswell's famous claim that politics is about "who gets what, how, and when," the politics of inequality has featured prominently among the central themes in the discipline. In recent years interest in inequality has grown even more intense, as new sources of data reveal growing disparities between rich and poor in countries across the world. Real-world developments have drawn renewed attention to the question of the relationship between economic and political power.
Democracy is premised on formal political equality. Yet if economic wealth can be transformed into political influence, then we have good reason to worry about the quality of democracy. In this course students will read, discuss and engage with current social-science research about the relationship between inequality and democracy in comparative perspective. We will draw on examples from around the world, and explore key conceptual, empirical, and normative issues, as well as gain a handle on central theoretical debates in the field. We will consider both the political origins as well as the political consequences of economic inequalities, asking such questions as "Which policies tend to increase inequality?" "What is the relationship between economic and political influence?" "Is there a ‘power elite,' or does policy-making include a broader range of citizens' interests?"
The course first explores core conceptual and normative issues: how do we measure inequality, and why should we care about it? We then turn to the origins of inequalities and explanations of its evolution, and then to political efforts to redress inequalities, starting with the question of why the poor do not soak the rich under democracy. Given this "Robin Hood Paradox," we then turn to efforts to explain real-world variation in redistribution around the world. Finally, we explore important consequences of inequality for democracy: the extent to which the rich "win" over everyone else in terms of policy representation, and the impact of economic inequality on the long-term evolution of democracy itself.
The readings we will use to explore these issues are drawn from across the social sciences, and are chosen to highlight the key theoretical questions at stake in the study of the tension between inequality and democracy.