Vlaicu, Razvan, Inequality, Participation, and Polarization (October 6, 2014). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2506295

“The strong co-movement of economic inequality and partisan polarization in the U.S. is typically explained as the result of increased citizen polarization into economic classes or through the presence of a wealth bias in the political process. This paper formalizes an alternative, class-less, theory of political polarization under income inequality where citizen ideology is fixed and orthogonal to income. Instead income affects political competition through changing patterns of political participation, i.e., voting vs. giving. Income inequality depresses turnout and bolsters giving, reducing the electoral penalty for radicalization and causing candidates’ electoral priorities to shift from seeking votes to seeking partisan policy goals. Party competition for candidates to form a majority policy coalition can exacerbate candidate polarization by increasing intra-party ideological homogeneity and the prevalence of safe seats. The model captures polarization data features beyond between-party mean differences.”