19.5.4 Political Processes
A great deal of the political science and of the policy literature is concerned with the effects of inequalities and how they can be mitigated in various societies. For this chapter, however, it is the other direction that is interesting: mechanisms of how various political arrangements (voting, electoral institutions and representation in political parties, interest reconciliation and employer–employee relationships) affect inequality. The core question is, therefore, How and to what extent can political factors account for the variability of inequalities across countries and over time? How much of the cross-country and over-time variance of inequality can be explained by political determinants (agency,55 institutions ...
