Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper examines the surprisingly understudied relationship between economic inequality and domestic political instability.  In societies characterized by a growing divide between the haves and have-nots, one might think that domestic political disagreements between the two sides would wreak havoc on the domestic policymaking process, destabilizing national politics and undermining domestic cohesion more generally.  My paper’s theoretical model casts doubt on this conclusion.  At the same time, however, it raises a new (and no less troubling) concern about inequality’s long-term political impact:  rather than increased domestic instability, the paper’s model suggests we should be worrying about an excess of domestic stability, as lopsided partisan divides strengthen the incumbent’s traditional advantage in electoral politics.  With incumbents feeling more secure, we may soon be seeing majority “tyrannies” of the sort that worried Madison and de Tocqueville in the past—and that embolden members of the Tea Party movement today.

At the center of the model is a distinction I draw between “normal” inequality and “asymmetric” inequality.  My main hypothesis is that the advantages traditionally enjoyed by incumbents are diminished (and domestic politics correspondingly destabilized) by normal inequality, but not by asymmetric inequality, which stabilizes politics at the expense of concentrated minorities.

To lend concreteness to the argument, I consider US House districts where strongly-identifying Democrats are counterbalanced by a roughly equal number of strongly-identifying Republicans.  In symmetrically-bipolar districts of this sort, elected officials tend to avoid hard-line positions.  Although incumbents do occasionally take sides, they do so with trepidation, fearing their actions could spark an anger-fueled counter-mobilization by the other side.  Caught between a rock and a hard place, incumbents lose either way—by pursuing a bipartisan “catch-all” strategy that depresses turnout among alienated core voters or by favoring the interests of one pole at the expense of support (and votes) from the other.

By contrast, stability is my predicted outcome for political districts characterized by rising “asymmetric” inequality.  Where electorates are tilting increasingly toward Republican identifiers, I expect to find Republican incumbents moving aggressively to the right; and where rising inequality is swelling the ranks of committed Democratic partisans, I expect to see Democratic incumbents enthusiastically championing the interests of the have-nots.  In both cases, incumbents can keep their core constituencies happy without fear of provoking an electorally damaging backlash.  Although centrist voters—and certainly those with equally-extreme views on the other side—may well feel “tyrannized”, the incumbent’s overwhelming electoral dominance would render any rebalancing efforts futile.  And so, supported by an expanding majority, incumbents can rest (relatively) easy in the knowledge that their seats are safe.

As the US exhibits both types of inequality, it makes an ideal laboratory for testing my theoretical model.  Moving beyond US domestic politics, I conclude by considering whether interventionist foreign policies might be less attractive to presidents and prime ministers who face asymmetrically polarized electorates.  Supported by an overwhelmingly dominant pole, they have less to gain (electorally) in rallying their nations behind risky foreign ventures that could backfire in a very literal sense.