Democracy and the demand for government redistribution: A survey analysis

This article uses survey data to study the impact of democracy on the demand by poor citizens for government redistribution. Taking the well‐known Meltzer‐Richard theory as the point of departure, three arguments are presented as to why such a demand should be stronger in democracies than in autocracies: in democracies low‐income groups are: (1) exposed to elections that can make a policy difference: (2) better informed about the income distribution; and (3) better equipped to process such information. The argument receives empirical support in a Bayesian multilevel analysis which combines 188 World Values Surveys with cross‐sectional and longitudinal macro data from 80 countries.