Rising inequality has caused concerns that democratic governments are no longer responding to majority demands, an argument the authors label thesubversion of democracy model(sdm). Thesdmcomes in two forms: one uses public opinion data to show that policies are strongly biased toward the preferences of the rich; the other uses macrolevel data to show that governments aren’t responding to rising inequality. This article critically reassesses thesdm, points to potential biases, and proposes solutions that suggest a different interpretation of the data, which the authors label therepresentative democracy model(rdm). After testing thesdmagainst therdmon public opinion data and on a new data set on fiscal policy, they find that middle-class power has remained remarkably strong over time, even as inequality has risen. The authors conclude that the rich have little influence on redistributive policies, and that the democratic state is apparently not increasingly constrained by global capital.

中文翻译：

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经济利益的政治代表

日益加剧的不平等引起了人们的担忧，即民主政府不再响应多数人的要求，作者将这一论点称为颠覆民主模式(sdm）。这sdm有两种形式：一种是使用舆论数据表明政策强烈偏向富人的偏好；另一个使用宏观数据表明政府没有对日益加剧的不平等做出反应。本文批判性地重新评估了sdm，指出潜在的偏见，并提出建议对数据进行不同解释的解决方案，作者将其标记为代议制民主模式(rdm）。测试后sdm反对这rdm根据公众舆论数据和关于财政政策的新数据集，他们发现随着时间的推移，中产阶级的力量仍然非常强大，即使不平等加剧了。作者得出的结论是，富人对再分配政策几乎没有影响，而且民主国家显然没有越来越多地受到全球资本的约束。