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likely to promote democratization. Houle (2009) suggests that inequality harms
consolidation but has no net effect on democratization. Democratic transition and
consolidation in South Korea and Taiwan, countries with low levels of income
inequality, seem consistent with the view of Boix and that of Houle but inconsistent
with that of Acemoglu and Robinson and that of Ansell and Samuels. Democratic
transition and consolidation in Indonesia, Mongolia, and the Philippines, countries
with high levels of income inequality, seem to contradict the view of Boix as well
as that of Acemoglu and Robinson but are consistent with that of Ansell and
Samuels and that of Houle. The absence of democratic transition in Malaysia and
Singapore, countries with high levels of income inequality, seems consistent with
the view of Boix and that of Acemoglu and Robinson but appears to contradict that
of Ansell and Samuels. East Asia seems to offer puzzles and questions to be
solved.

IV

In connecting inequality and distributive politics, much of prior research builds
on the median voter theorem which emphasizes the redistributive preference of the
median voter (Meltzer and Richard 1981). Scholarly efforts have largely been
concentrated on accounting for variation in distributive outcomes in affluent
democracies and developing theories of distributive politics in democracies (Iversen
2006). Recently there have been growing efforts to understand the political
consequences of income inequality, such as electoral turnout, political involvement,
political representation, partisan alignment, policy responsiveness, political
polarization, and quality of governance (McCarthy et al. 2006; Bartels 2008;
Beramendi and Anderson 2008; Solt 2008; Uslaner 2008; Bermeo 2009).

One of the areas of research pertains to the impact of inequality on support
for democracy, which will be addressed here. There are political economy theories
linking inequality to democracy at the macro-level with contrasting expectations.
First, the redistribution-democracy theory assumes that in unequal societies the
wealthy are less supportive of democracy, especially institutions of majority rule,
while being less opposed to dictatorship than the poor (Boix 2003; Acemoglu and
Robinson 2006). Second, the elite-competition theory, by contrast, assumes that in เอกสารประกอบการอภิปรายร่วมระหว่างผู้แทนจากต่างประเทศ
unequal societies the wealthy are more supportive of democracy, especially
institutions of horizontal accountability while being more opposed to dictatorship
than the poor (Ansell and Samuels 2014). Finally, the self-enforcing theory of
democracy assumes that in unequal and less affluent societies, the wealthy are less
supportive of democracy, especially institutions of majority rule while being less
opposed to dictatorship than the poor (Przeworski 2006, 2008).