Huijsmans Twan, Rijken Arieke J, Gaidyte Teodora
Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Department of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Polit Behav. 2022;44(3):1203-1223. doi: 10.1007/s11109-020-09652-z. Epub 2020 Oct 12.
We investigated whether income gaps in voting turnout vary with country-level economic inequality, and whether this pattern differs between wealthier and less-wealthy countries. Moreover, we investigated whether the prevalence of clientelism was the underlying mechanism that accounts for the presumed negative interaction between relative income and economic inequality at lower levels of national wealth per capita. The harmonised PolPart dataset, combining cross-national surveys from 66 countries and 292 country-years, including 510,184 individuals, was analysed using multilevel logistic regression models. We found that the positive effect of relative income on voting was weaker at higher levels of economic inequality, independent of the level of national wealth. Although clientelism partially explains why economic inequality reduces the income gap in voter turnout, it does not do so in the way we expected. It seems to decrease turnout of higher income groups, rather than increase turnout of lower income groups. Importantly, that economic inequality reduces the income gap in voter turnout does not imply that economic inequality is positive for democratic representation, since economic inequality was found to depress the likelihood of voting for all income groups.
我们研究了投票率方面的收入差距是否会随国家层面的经济不平等而变化，以及这种模式在较富裕国家和较不富裕国家之间是否存在差异。此外，我们还研究了庇护主义的盛行是否是导致在人均国民财富水平较低时相对收入与经济不平等之间假定的负面相互作用的潜在机制。我们使用多层逻辑回归模型对统一的PolPart数据集进行了分析，该数据集结合了来自66个国家和292个国家年份的跨国调查，涵盖510,184个人。我们发现，相对收入对投票的积极影响在经济不平等程度较高时较弱，且与国民财富水平无关。虽然庇护主义部分解释了经济不平等为何会缩小选民投票率方面的收入差距，但并非如我们预期的那样。它似乎降低了高收入群体的投票率，而不是提高了低收入群体的投票率。重要的是，经济不平等缩小选民投票率方面的收入差距并不意味着经济不平等对民主代表性有积极作用，因为研究发现经济不平等会降低所有收入群体投票的可能性。
