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authoritarian rule or illiberal democracy may not be appealing to high-income people
because it may collide with their new values and beliefs, the importance of which
could outweigh that of their material interests. The findings evidently suggest that
the micro-level foundations of political economy theories linking inequality to
democracy remain tenuous in the context of East Asia.

V

Considering the rising economic inequality and political polarization around the
globe, it is important to understand the connection between inequality and
democracy and the role of distributive politics in East Asia. There has been not
much scholarly effort to examine how distributions of economic resources affect
politics and political institutions in the context of East Asia. Yet, Park and Uslaner
(2020) sheds some light on the impact of inequality on political institutions, political
support, and political behavior in East Asia.

The evidence from East Asia suggests that theories and models largely
developed from Western nations have limited explanatory power in East Asian
countries which have divergent political and economic histories. The connection
between inequality and political institutions is much more complicated. It is found
that the existing frameworks of inequality-democracy relations fail to provide
satisfactory explanations for democratization in East Asia (Lee 2020). The micro-
level evidence for the relationship between inequality and democracy turns out to
be mixed. It is found that the impact of inequality on system affect is mitigated by
institutions of voice and accountability, suggesting that inequality is more
detrimental in authoritarian regimes than in democracies (Chu and Wu 2020). The
impact of inequality on distributive politics is conditioned by not only institutional
but also historical and structural factors. It is found that redistribution preferences
contribute to ideological identification as left or right, but the impact tends to be far
weaker in East Asia (Jou and Koo 2020). It is also found that inequality plays a
limited role in mobilizing the poor in electoral politics in East Asia, suggesting that
electoral institutions themselves may be insufficient to mobilize the poor in
distributive politics unless inequality becomes a salient issue (Cho 2020). It is also
found that the influence of inequality on electoral politics is conditioned by the เอกสารประกอบการอภิปรายร่วมระหว่างผู้แทนจากต่างประเทศ
patterns of social cleavages (Chang and Park 2020).

The politics of inequality is not visible in much of East Asia. Despite growing
inequality, the region displays fewer features of distributive politics. The median
voter theorem or a simple left-right partisan model proves to be limited in
accounting for politics in East Asia. Inequality and redistribution appear to have low
political salience in party competition and electoral politics. Much research needs to