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Published in:
2007 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
When Can the Rabble Redistribute? Democratization and Income Distribution in Low- and Middle-income Countries
Author : Philip Nel
Published in: Institutions and Market Economies
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
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The last decades of the twentieth century experienced an extensive introduction and/or deepening of electoral democracy in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs); a series of events that Diamond calls ‘a democratic breakthrough without precedent in world history’ (Diamond, 1999: 24).1 However, contrary to the optimistic expectation of many analysts and decision-makers in Western democracies that all good things go together, the available evidence suggests that episodes of positive regime change in LMICs as a rule have seldom been followed by a reduction of wealth and income inequality in those countries. The purpose of this chapter is to propose an explanation for this anomaly.