I-CSI SEMINAR: F. David Rueda (Oxford), “Preferences that Matter: Inequality, Redistribution and Voting”

“While a significant literature in political economy has recently focused on the relationship between inequality and redistribution preferences, it is unclear that these preferences have any influence over political behavior. In this paper we argue that redistribution preferences are indeed a most significant determinant of voting. We test our theoretical claims with American data and show that voting for the Democratic Party by the rich is highly dependent on state inequality levels. The rich in more unequal states are more supportive of redistribution than the rich in more equal states. We contend that it is precisely these redistribution preferences that make them more likely to vote for the Democratic Party. Our analysis goes beyond previous research by explicitly studying this preference mechanism in a potential-outcomes framework. We disentangle the direct and indirect effects of inequality to obtain estimates of inequality’s effect on voting through preferences.”

During the 2015-2016 academic year, F. David Rueda is a Visiting Professor in Political Science and Senior Fellow in the Yale Program on Democracy at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.

Professor Rueda’s current research examines the relationship between government partisanship and economic policy in industrialized democracies. He is also working on projects analyzing the politics of inequality and the influence of institutional configurations over political and economic outcomes.