Explaining Income Inequality in Authoritarian Regimes: A Comparative Institutional Perspective

The relationship between regime type and economic inequality has been extensively studied in both comparative politics and political economy literature. Classic studies posit that democracy is associated with lower levels of income inequality and that transition from autocracy to democracy leads to more redistributive policies. Yet, scholars do not agree on the determinants and mechanisms of such relationship and empirical findings do not unequivocally support classic theoretical assumptions. In addition, the majority of studies has been primarily focused on the processes of democratisation, and thus, has erroneously treated autocracies as a homogenous group of countries. However, recent academic contributions have shed light on the authoritarian heterogeneity and on the extensive variation in institutional settings among autocracies. Built on the evidence that autocracies differ among themselves as much as they differ from democracy, we examine whether democratic institutions or quality of government account for variation in redistributive policies in authoritarian contexts. Using a comparative quantitative approach to test our hypotheses, we conduct a longitudinal analysis on over 80 autocracies around the world. Recent improvements in country and year coverage of data on income inequality allow us to reduce the limitations related to the lack of available data, upon which most of the existing studies on the issue are affected. Preliminary results show that democratic institutions and quality of government play a pivotal role in influencing redistributive policies and determining the level of income inequality in autocratic countries.