Kammas, P. and Sarantides, V. (2016) Fiscal redistribution around elections when democracy is not "the only game in town". Public Choice, 168 (3). pp. 279-311. ISSN 0048-5829
Abstract
This paper seeks to examine the implications of policy intervention around elections on income inequality and fiscal redistribution. We first develop a simplified theoretical framework that allows us to examine election-cycle fiscal redistribution programs in the presence of a revolutionary threat from some groups of agents, i.e., when democracy is not “the only game in town”. According to our theoretical analysis, when democracy is not “the only game in town”, incumbents implement redistributive policies not only as a means of improving their reelection prospects, but also in order to signal that “democracy works”, thereby preventing a reversion to an autocratic status quo ante at a time of the current regime’s extreme vulnerability. Subsequently, focusing on 65 developed and developing countries over the 1975–2010 period, we report robust empirical evidence of pre-electoral budgetary manipulation in new democracies. Consistent with our theory, this finding is driven by political instability that induces incumbents to redistribute income—through tax and spending policies—in a relatively broader coalition of voters with the aim of consolidating the vulnerable newly established democratic regime.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | elections; new democracy; redistribution; income inequality |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Economics (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 23 Aug 2016 12:11 |
Last Modified: | 26 Oct 2018 12:31 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11127-016-0363-2 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11127-016-0363-2 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:103993 |