Political Inequality in (Un)equal Contexts: How Income and Wealth Inequality Reshape Education- and Income-Based Disparities in Political Support and Participation

Research has documented education- and income-based disparities in political support and participation, but less is known about how these gaps are conditioned by economic inequality. Building on Easton’s democratic input framework, we examine how income and wealth inequality reconfigure education- and income-based disparities in (i) political trust, (ii) satisfaction with democracy, (iii) voter turnout, (iv) protest voting, (v) institutional participation, and (vi) non-institutional participation.

Starting from the inequality–democratic engagement hypothesis (Solt 2008, 2010), we refine the argument that inequality concentrates political influence among the affluent and reduces responsiveness to ordinary citizens. Herein, an assumption is that socio-economic disparities, whether income- or education-based, are similarly moderated by economic inequality. We instead argue that income- and education-based disparities operate differently. In economically unequal countries, material hierarchies dominate, making income decisive for democratic input disparities. In more equal societies, material barriers are less decisive, with education – via civic skills and political literacy – becoming the decisive resource. Thus, inequality depresses overall democratic inputs and determines how socio-economic disparities are structured.

Empirically, we link the European Social Survey (2002–2022) to contextual indicators from the World Inequality Database, OECD and World Governance Indicators. Using a random effects within-between modelling strategy, we separate cross-national variation from longitudinal dynamics to assess how income and wealth inequality modify socio-economic gaps in democratic inputs.

Our findings show that rising inequality within countries is consistently associated with lower political trust, reduced satisfaction with democracy, and a shift from institutional participation toward non-institutional and protest-based forms of engagement. Moreover, we find that socio-economic gaps in democratic inputs shift with the level of inequality. In contexts of lower enduring inequality, large education-based disparities are observed, particularly for trust, turnout, and institutional participation. In contrast, though income-based disparities do remain, they are smaller than education-based disparities, particularly in terms of satisfaction with democracy and non-electoral participation. When inequality is enduring high, education-based disparities in institutional participation are reduced, with disparities in protest voting and political support becoming insignificant. Rather, there are strong disparities in participation, and to a lesser extent political support, by income.

Together, these results indicate that macro-level inequality operates as a cleavage switch in democratic inputs: when inequality is high, material hierarchies dominate; when inequality is lower, educational resources sort citizens more strongly. Policy-wise, interventions must be context-matched: material inclusion is key in high-inequality settings, while cognitive and civic-skill development is more pertinent in lower-inequality contexts.