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การประชุมวิชาการ
สถาบันพระปกเกล้า ครั้งที่ 21
ลดช่องว่างความเหลื่อมล้ำ สร้างคุณภาพประชาธิปไตย

Overall, the premise that support for democracy is primarily determined
by distributional conflicts seems to be questionable in the context of East Asia.

By emphasizing the conflict of economic interests between the wealthy and the
poor or between the state elites and the new elites, political economy theories

linking inequality and democracy tend to overlook the role of values and beliefs
in shaping attitudes towards political institutions. Even if distributional conflicts
remain salient, authoritarian rule or illiberal democracy may not be appealing to

high-income people because it may collide with their new values and beliefs, the
importance of which could outweigh that of their material interests. The findings

evidently suggest that the micro-level foundations of political economy theories
linking inequality to democracy remain tenuous in the context of East Asia.

V

Considering the rising economic inequality and political polarization around
the globe, it is important to understand the connection between inequality and

democracy and the role of distributive politics in East Asia. There has been not
much scholarly effort to examine how distributions of economic resources affect
politics and political institutions in the context of East Asia. Yet, Park and

Uslaner (2020) sheds some light on the impact of inequality on political
institutions, political support, and political behavior in East Asia.

The evidence from East Asia suggests that theories and models largely

developed from Western nations have limited explanatory power in East Asian
countries which have divergent political and economic histories. The connection
between inequality and political institutions is much more complicated. It is

found that the existing frameworks of inequality-democracy relations fail to
provide satisfactory explanations for democratization in East Asia (Lee 2020).

The micro-level evidence for the relationship between inequality and democracy
turns out to be mixed. It is found that the impact of inequality on system
affect is mitigated by institutions of voice and accountability, suggesting that

inequality is more detrimental in authoritarian regimes than in democracies (Chu
and Wu 2020). The impact of inequality on distributive politics is conditioned by เอกสารประกอบการอภิปรายร่วมระหว่างผู้แทนจากต่างประเทศ

not only institutional but also historical and structural factors. It is found that
redistribution preferences contribute to ideological identification as left or right,
but the impact tends to be far weaker in East Asia (Jou and Koo 2020). It is