Some scholars champion broad conceptualizations of democracy where distribution of economic resources is an integral part, whereas several prominent arguments drawing on narrower conceptualizations of democracy still assume that progressive redistribution is central to democratic politics. We empirically analyse individual opinions on whether progressive taxation and redistribution are among democracy's central characteristics. While many citizens around the world associate democracy with redistribution, we find that surprisingly few consider redistribution among the most central characteristics of democracy. We further analyse what factors affect individuals’ propensity to consider redistribution among democracy's most important features. Running multi-level models, we find that having lived under a communist regime and − although less robust – currently living under democracy make individuals less likely to hold this notion. However, individuals with more to gain from progressive redistribution (that is, little education and belonging to lower classes) are more likely to hold it. We discuss how our findings help shed light on two puzzles in comparative politics; (I) why do democracies not promote more redistributive policies than autocracies, and (II) why is there no net relationship between income inequality and democratization

The organisation of legislative chambers and the consequences of parliamentary procedures have been among the most prominent research questions in legislative studies. Even though democratic elections not only lead to the formation of a government but also result in an opposition, the literature has mostly neglected oppositions and their role in legislative chambers. This paper proposes to fill this gap by looking at the legislative organisation from the perspective of opposition players. The paper focuses on the potential influence of opposition players in the policy-making process and presents data on more than 50 legislative chambers. The paper shows considerable variance of the formal power granted to opposition players. Furthermore, the degree of institutionalisation of opposition rights is connected to electoral systems and not necessarily correlated with other institutional characteristics such as regime type or the size of legislative chambers.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract