Social Science Research Council

2007 DPDF Research Field:
The Political Economy of Redistribution

Why do some countries or regions redistribute more income than others? What accounts for changes in patterns of redistribution over time? This interdisciplinary research field seeks to answer these questions empirically by applying a range of approaches drawn from political science, economics, sociology, geography and history. By studying "redistribution," we seek to explain: 1) how individuals cluster in geographic space according to income, class, and political preference; 2) how different political institutions aggregate preferences in different ways; 3) the impact of non-economic issue dimensions on patterns of redistribution; and 4) the role(s) of regime type, factors of production, sectoral politics, exposure to market risks, and asset specificity in patterns of redistribution.

This research field will achieve coherence from a common puzzle and theoretical framework rather than a common set of empirical techniques, although most of our attention in the workshops will be given to the nuts and bolts of doing high quality theory-guided empirical research. We expect that students will focus on different dimensions of the field, using different kinds of empirical data, including: survey research; geographic indicators to combine surveys with local-level demographic and economic data; demographic and political data at the level of census tracts, electoral precincts, counties, and other administrative units, in some cases with the aid of GIS software; large datasets that permit cross-country comparison; quantitative historical data; archives; field experiments and observational designs that approximate quasi-experiments.