Democracia

Comparative Political Studies http://cps.sagepub.com/

Inequality and Democratization: A Contractarian Approach
Ben Ansell and David Samuels Comparative Political Studies 2010 43: 1543 originally published online 29 July 2010 DOI: 10.1177/0010414010376915 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cps.sagepub.com/content/43/12/1543

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CPS431210.1177/0010414010376915

Articles

Inequality and Democratization: A Contractarian Approach
Ben Ansell1 and David Samuels1

Comparative Political Studies 43(12) 1543–1574© The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0010414010376915 http://cps.sagepub.com

Abstract Scholars continue to grapple with the question of the relationship between economic development and democratization; prominent recent research has focused on the effects of economic inequality. Boix suggests that democratization is likelierwhen inequality is low, whereas Acemoglu and Robinson argue that democratization is likelier when inequality is at middling levels. Both assume that democratization is a function of autocratic elites’ fear of the extent to which a future median voter would redistribute under different levels of inequality. Drawing on contractarian political theory, the authors suggest that democratization isinstead a function of demands by rising economic groups for protection from the state. This alternative approach suggests that land and income inequality affect democratization differently: Autocracies with equal land distribution are indeed more likely to democratize, but contrary to the conventional wisdom, income inequality is more likely to promote democratization. Keywords democratization,inequality, regime change, modernization theory

1

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Corresponding Author: David Samuels, University of Minnesota, Department of Political Science, 1414 Social Sciences, Minneapolis, MN 55455 Email: dsamuels@umn.edu

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Comparative Political Studies 43(12)Recent research on the origins of democracy continues to scrutinize the core idea behind modernization theory, that economic development somehow generates pressure to liberalize nondemocratic regimes. Although some have sought to dismiss this hypothesis (Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub, & Limongi, 2000), others have offered new theoretical twists on longestablished arguments. In particular, recent booksby Carles Boix (2003) and Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (A&R, 2006) have received wide readership by shifting the focus from the purported effect of the level of wealth to that of the distribution of wealth on elites’ incentives to block or allow political liberalization. Boix’s and A&R’s arguments are redistributivist theories of democratization. Such approaches do not require modernizationto cause mass psychological-cultural change or Marxian working or bourgeois classes to emerge for democratization to come about. Instead, building on Meltzer and Richard’s (1981) seminal median voter model of politics, redistributivist theories suggest that regime change is fundamentally driven by autocratic elites’ fear of the relative costs of redistribution under democracy: As inequality...