This study examines the effects of democracy and hybrid regimes on income inequality. Despite strong theoretical arguments for the redistributive impact of democracy, empirical evidence of this phenomenon is inconclusive. This study helps to solve this puzzle by suggesting that the two key dimensions of democracy, contestation and inclusiveness/participation, have opposite effects on inequality. Whereas contestation provides incentives for politicians to redistribute, suffrage or participation alone (without competition) affords elites further control over the population and reduces its redistributive threat. Therefore, electoral authoritarianism (characterized by high inclusiveness and medium contestation) is also expected to be more unequal than either democratic or authoritarian regimes. These arguments are primarily supported by the results of instrumental variable regressions of data from 135 countries from 1971 to 2015 and are supplemented by some qualitative evidence.

本研究考察了民主和混合制度对收入不平等的影响。尽管对民主的再分配影响有强有力的理论论据，但这种现象的经验证据尚无定论。这项研究通过表明民主的两个关键维度，竞争和包容性/参与，对不平等有相反的影响，有助于解决这个难题。而竞争为政治家提供了重新分配的动力，选举权或单独参与（没有竞争）使精英能够进一步控制人口并减少其重新分配的威胁。因此，选举威权主义（以高包容性和中等竞争为特征）也有望比民主或专制政权更加不平等。