In liberal institutional contexts (mostly English‐speaking), increasing income inequality predicted higher support for state provision of social welfare. Using ISSP and WID data (1980‒2006), we tested these claims.

However, the public may react to inequality differently depending on institutional context. The law of political finance must account for these pathological forms of democracy that produce unfair elections, unrepresentative governance, and unpopular laws and policies.ĭoes public opinion react to inequality, and if so, how? The social harms caused by increasing inequality should cause public opinion to ramp up demand for social welfare protections. Together, these legal forms of corruption co-opt democracy’s values and outputs. This article suggests that enduring patterns within political finance have led to the consolidation of two forms of oligarchy: plutocracy, or government of, by and for the wealthy, which represents the decay of liberal democracy and partyocracy, government by party elites who have appropriated state power, which represents the decay of social democracy. Unpopular laws and public disenchantment abound. Whether a product of the undue influence of wealthy donors and spenders, or the power of major parties to increase their own public financing and exclude minor parties, many advanced democracies have broken their core promises of equality, popular participation, representation, and accountability. A comparative view of the financing of political parties and campaigns exposes two main options for doing so: allow economic elites to control democracy or allow elites from within major political parties to do so. Economic and political inequality could not endure and grow as they have if the participatory, egalitarian, and representative facets of democracy were not kept in check.

Citizens against plutocracy