Authoritarian Powers: Russia and China Compared by Stephen White & Ian McAllister & Neil Munro

Author:Stephen White & Ian McAllister & Neil Munro [White, Stephen & McAllister, Ian & Munro, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138569935
Google: SdnoswEACAAJ
Goodreads: 39230639
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

Hypotheses

Based largely on the experience of Western countries, most studies of distributive justice attitudes suggest that citizens in poorer households are more likely to support government intervention to redistribute income in favour of the less well-off, typically by using progressive taxes to fund social welfare programmes (Svallfors 1997, 2006; Cusack et al. 2006; Rehm 2009, 2011; Margalit 2013). Using data collected in Russia in the mid-1990s, Kluegel et al. (1999, p. 272) showed that support for government intervention to equalise living standards was negatively related to current and prospective evaluations of subjective living standards, and the same pattern was found also in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, East Germany and Hungary. Ravallion and Lokshin (2000, p. 100) showed that amongst those who expected to live better or expected no change in their circumstances, support for restricting the incomes of the rich (and, implicitly, raising the relative incomes of the poor) was negatively related to household expenditure and to upward consumption trajectory, and positively related to concern about providing for basic needs. In China, a regression analysis of support for government intervention to equalise living standards showed that income was insignificant, subjective changes in the standard of living were a marginal positive influence, but a measure of relative social status comparing current living standards to those of one’s peers proved to be a strong negative influence (Han & Whyte 2009, pp. 201–3). The balance of evidence seems to suggest that the general association of lower income and economic dissatisfaction with support for programmes designed to equalise incomes or to reduce poverty seems to hold in both Russia and China, although the precise contours of the relationship depend on measurement strategies and what other variables are included as controls. Setting these details aside for the moment, we would expect that in both countries:

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