"Inequality, Distributive Conflict and Regime Change"
An important body of new work in comparative politics suggests a causal relationship between inequality, distributive conflict and changes both to and from democratic rule. However, we show that inequality does not appear to be associated with regime change. Moreover, the incidence of both democratic transitions and reversions to authoritarian rule that show signs of distributive conflict is small, accounting for less than half of all transitions during the "third wave" of democratization from 1980 to 2010. In this chapter of a book with Robert Kaufman, Haggard considers the role of social organization in distributive conflict transitions, contrasting them with transitions that occur in the absence of such conflict.
Stephan Haggard is the Krause Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California San Diego. His publications include Pathways from the Periphery: The Newly Industrializing Countries in the International System (1990); The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (with Robert Kaufman, 1995); The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (2000); From Silicon Valley to Singapore: Location and Competitive Advantage in the Hard Disk Drive Industry (with David McKendrick and Richard Doner, 2000); and Democracy, Development and Welfare States: Latin America, East Asia, Eastern Europe (with Robert Kaufman, 2008).
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