The quality of government conditions political disagreement over redistributive policies

ABSTRACT

This study argues that the quality of government structures the divide of public opinion on redistribution within countries. Countries with higher government quality have both the capacity and impartiality required to implement effective and fair redistribution. In effect, material self-interest and fairness-based evaluations should become better predictors of policy preferences in countries with higher government quality. An empirical analysis of survey data from 40 institutionally diverse countries supports this theory. Interaction regression models show that the government quality moderates the effects of income and unfairness perceptions on redistribution preferences. Both preference drivers are more strongly associated with redistribution support in countries with higher government quality. Preferences thereby become more heterogeneous in higher-quality settings. The results offer micro-level support for the theory that government quality structures politics and policies via the public opinion channel. To the extent that public opinion influences political behavior and policymaking, higher government quality should induce a stronger economic left-right divide over these political phenomena.

Acknowledgements

Previous versions of this article were presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Political Science Association (EPSA), 24–25 June 2021, at the International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP5), 5–9 July 2021 in Barcelona, as well as the Academic Convention of the German Political Science Association, 14–16 September 2021. The article benefitted from many helpful comments and suggestions. I specifically wish to thank Andrea Binder, Lukas Hakelberg, Macartan Humphreys, Simon Linder, Thomas Rixen, David Weisstanner, and four anonymous reviewers.

Data availability statement

A replication package including all data and code are available at the following OSF repository: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GMSPN

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Winsorzing means that values below the 1st percentile are recoded to values at the 1st percentile and values above the 99th to the 99th percentile.

2 This divergence d of profession i is defined as $d_i={\displaystyle \frac{a_i}{e_i}}$ if $a_i\ge e_i$ and $d_i={\displaystyle \frac{e_i}{a_i}}$ if $a_i<e_i$, where a refers to estimated actual earnings and e to just earnings.

3 Unfortunately, an item that specifically addresses support for government redistribution rather than government responsibility is not available.

4 This is achieved by assigning more (less) weight to countries with less (more) observations (see the supplementary material for details).