Income Inequality in Authoritarian Regimes: The Effect of Institutions, Rights to Private Property, and Globalization

This paper study the relationship between income inequality and authoritarian political institutions under globalization. More specifically, its purpose is to understand the effect of how different institutional setup, in this case the presence of electoral institutions, size of ruling coalition, and, protection of property rights affect the level of income inequality in authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, this paper adds to the conventional independent variables typically used in authoritarian studies literature by adding international market forces represented by trade and financial globalization by KOF Index. Analyzing 100 authoritarian regimes from 1972 to 2019, this study found that 1) when globalization are not taken into account the institutional setup of authoritarian regimes affect the level of income inequality in authoritarian regimes. In particular, regimes with large ruling coalition and institutionalized election and party competitions is expected to have lower level of  income inequality; (2) protection to rights to private property is inversely related with income inequality, with regimes which have higher protection of the rights to private property tend to have lower income equality; (3) trade and financial globalization are inversely related with income inequality; and (4)  the impact of domestic political institution is subdued when international market forces are taken into account