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Does experience of democracy reduce ethnic economic inequality?

Yuxiao Han,Zhiming Han

Published 2025 in Politics

ABSTRACT

Scholars have traditionally focused on cross-sectional or instantaneous measures of democracy, such as democratic levels and democratisation, to explore the relationship between democracy and ethnic economic inequality. However, they have often overlooked longitudinal measures, specifically the impact of democratic experience on reducing ethnic economic inequality. I argue that democracy can mitigate ethnic economic inequality through competitive elections, which promote inclusive policies and expand the redistribution of wealth. However, this egalitarian effect is likely subject to temporal dynamics, potentially following a nonlinear trajectory in which the impact first intensifies before gradually diminishing. I further posit that sharing ethnic political power moderates the impact of democratic experience on ethnic economic inequality. In countries with unequal ethnic political power sharing, addressing ethnic economic inequality requires a longer experience of democracy. To test these hypotheses, fixed-effects regression models were used to analyse panel data from 57 countries between 1992 and 2012, providing empirical evidence for these theoretical propositions.

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