Speaker Series – Mads Andreas Elkjaer

The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship presents:

Middle-Class Democracy: Economic Inequality and Political Representation in Comparative Perspective
Mads Andreas Elkjaer (U. of Copenhagen, Danmark)

When: April 19, 2024, 3 – 5 p.m.
Where: Université de Montréal, Pavillon Lionel-Groulx, C-4145, 3150 rue Jean-Brillant, Montréal (Québec) H3T 1N8
 

Abstract :
In recent years, concerns have been raised that democratic governments are no longer responding to majority demands for redistribution. One part of the literature uses public opinion evidence to argue that redistributive policies are strongly biased toward the preferences of the rich, another uses macro-level data to argue that governments do not respond to rising inequality in the ways predicted by standard theories of democracy. In this book project, I combine survey and macro data on redistribution and taxation from a broad range of advanced democracies to reassess these conclusions. I argue that the power of the rich has not increased because of rising inequality and that the middle class remains a powerful political force in advanced democracies today. The United States appears to be an outlier, however.

This series is sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, which is funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).