Ideally, a representative democracy awards a genuine vote to each adult. We study whether this applies in competitive …

participants in 11 countries that make up over 30% of the global population and produce more than 40% of world GDP. Survey …

unrest or revolution and this may force the elite to democratize. Democracy may not consolidate because it is more … redistributive than a nondemocratic regime, and this gives the elite an incentive to mount a coup. Because inequality makes democracy … more costly for the elite, highly unequal societies are less likely to consolidate democracy and may end up oscillating …

to democracy and vice versa (consistent with the recent theoretical work by Acemoglu and Robinson) but, unlike older …