The Economic Effects of Democratic Participation

By Dennis C. Mueller, Thomas Stratmann. Social Science Research Network, 2003

220 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Considerable concern has been expressed in recent years about declines in voter participation rates in the United States and in several other major democratic countries. Some feel low participation rates introduce a “class bias” into the political process and thereby worsen the outcomes from it. Little empirical work exists, however, that measures the effects of lower participation on the welfare of a country. This paper begins to fill this void. It presents cross-national evidence that high levels of democratic participation are associated with more equal distributions of income. The paper’s results also imply, however, that this reduction in income inequality comes at a cost. High participation rates are related to larger government sectors which in turn lead to slower economic growth. We also present evidence of the “capture” of government by upper income groups in Latin and Central American countries.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e7b469931e1a977c378abc4db6d5be68327c6a29

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In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Tax Systems in the World: An Empirical Investigation into the Importance of Tax Bases, Administration Costs, Scale and Political Regime (2006, background): “Mueller and Stratmann (2003) have found that countries with higher voter participation rates have more equal distributions of income and a larger government sector.”
Employment, Wages, and Voter Turnout (2013, unknown): “…“political business cycle” (Nordhaus 1975) argue that decisions about economic policy are made with an eye to the anticipated future reaction of voters at the polls, and there is some evidence that turnout levels affect economic inequality and redistributive policies (Mueller and Stratmann 2003).”
Environmentalism, democracy, and pollution control (2005, background): “A related issue is why PARTICIPATION has no direct effect on environmental policy in even the full sample, in contrast to, e.g., the results presented by Mueller and Stratmann [43] for income distribution?”
VOTING, INEQUALITY AND REDISTRIBUTION (2007, unknown): “Kenny (1997), Lindert (1996), and Mueller and Stratmann (2002) .”
Electoral rules and voter turnout (2011, unknown): “For instance, democratic participation shapes income distribution and government size (Mueller and Stratmann, 2003) as well as it increases public sector efficiency (Borge et al., 2008).”
Public sector efficiency: the roles of political and budgetary institutions, fiscal capacity, and democratic participation (2008, unknown): “Mueller and Stratmann (2003) find no systematic evidence of democratic participation on growth in a large sample of democratic countries, while Fabrizio and Mody (2006) estimate a negative effect on budget balance in a sample of central and eastern European countries.”