Since the 1990s, economic inequality has risen in just about every affluent democracy in North America and Western Europe. But the last three decades have also been characterized by falling or stagnating levels of state-led economic redistribution. These two contemporaneous trends pose a puzzle for students of political economy. Why have democratically accountable governments not done more to compensate the large majority of citizens with low and middle income for rising top-income shares? Our introductory chapter begins by describing this puzzle of rising inequality and noting some nuances that most accounts regularly miss. We then examine two groups of explanations for the puzzle of rising inequality: one set that focuses on voters and their demands for redistribution, and another that focuses on elites and unequal representation that is biased against less-affluent citizens. This volume seeks to contribute to explaining the puzzle of rising inequality by bringing these two groups of explanations into dialogue with each other. We describe the contributions of the individual chapters to these efforts and suggest directions for future research.

With economic reforms in the 1980s, the opening up of political space and the end of war in the early 1990s, Mozambique embarked on a decentralisation process. As in other sub-Saharan Africa countries, the impact of the decentralisation reforms on local development and the strengthening of democracy has been modest. How can this be explained? This chapter addresses this question analysing how institutional dynamics shaped their results. The main argument is that the nature of the political system shaped reform results, in the context of institutional dynamics. Of these, those linked to state capacity and independence from private interests, stand out. Reforms are implemented according to group interests, particularly political parties’ interests, which capture the state and use them for maintaining and bolstering political power. Rather than being a means of improving the provision of public goods and strengthening democracy, decentralisation reinforces state control and panders the elite. Probably the biggest challenge facing decentralisation, this makes it a fundamental issue in any reform, within the context of strengthening democracy and promoting local development.

The Framers failed to anticipate universal suffrage and the American two-party system, let alone how these developments would change their system. Instead of letting Congress debate and decide policy, voters can now decide many issues directly. The chapter describes Americans grudging recognition that partisanship can lead to stable, responsible government. It then describes how 20th Century scholars developed rational voter models to formalize these ideas. It also asks how social voting, party leadership, identity politics, candidate charisma, and deep-pocketed donors change these results. Finally, it also argues that the existence of legislative deadlock lets comparatively small minorities take centrist compromises off the table. This forces the party system into presenting extreme choices that most voters oppose. The ensuing standoffs can last for years years and sometimes decades.

This chapter asks how voters react to political messaging and, crucially, sometimes change their minds. It begins by reviewing experimental psychology, neuroimaging, and artificial intelligence research showing that the brain reasons in two distinct ways: Recognizing patterns (fast or Type 1 thought) and constructing logical arguments (slow or type 2 thought). It then argues that the first mode almost always dominates political thought. The paradox is that humans have evolved to feel pleasure both in confirming old patterns and in being surprised by new ones. This means that while political messaging is often repetive, humans are also susceptible to messages that feature large departures from current orthodoxies. Because of majority rule, politicians will normally prefer messages that appeal to large numbers of voters. This explains how even highly-polarized electorates can sometimes realign around new issues to restore a more centrist politics.

This chapter reviews the Framers basic design principles, including separation of powers, federalism, and a frank recognition that all governments are and must be coercive.  It then presents a simple baseline for describing voter (un-)happiness with whatever policies the government adopts. The chapter ends with a detailed roadmap of succeeding chapters.

After independence, Mozambique relied on international solidarity and managed donor relations well. Donor dependency entailed loss of agency, allowing donors to challenge government capacity but never its authority. During the 2010s, donors expressed disappointment with reforms and challenged government legitimacy — not only due to developments in Mozambique. Donors are less enthusiastic about harmonised development cooperation and less concerned with aid effectiveness. Aid budgets are under pressure and development finance links more to other foreign policy concerns. Mozambique should expect increasing instrumentalisation of aid budgets. Institutions Mozambique developed to deal with donors are not well suited to present challenges. They focus on less relevant areas of the relationship with foreign countries, which often serve other agendas. Reforms could start with strengthening Mozambique’s Foreign Service as a genuine coordinator of foreign relations and the establishment of greater discipline around national plans and strategies. Institutionalising strong links between the foreign ministry and key economic ministries under the leadership of the prime minister could help.

This chapter provides a detailed account of the historical, political, and economic context of Mozambique. We draw attention to the big picture story and argue that the post-independence socio-economic performance and patterns of change cannot be understood without reference to the troubled history of the country. We identify fourteen core messages to keep in mind throughout the volume. They lead to selecting eight thematic areas for further study in Chapters 4 to 11.

How do organized interests contribute to unequal representation in contemporary democracies? We discuss two central channels: the selection of partisan legislators through elections and postelectoral influence via lobbying. We argue that these channels are potentially complementary strategies used by rational actors. Employing a game-theoretic model and simulations of interest group influence on legislative voting, we show that this logic may explain interest group strategies in unequal times. Our model implies that interest group strategies vary with party polarization and it highlights a challenge for empirical research on unequal representation and the literature on lobbying. Using statistical models commonly used in the literature to study biases in legislative voting or policy adoption, researchers are likely to overstate the relevance of elections as a channel through which groups affect legislative responsiveness and understate the role interest groups’ postelectoral influence. Our results stress the importance of theoretical models capturing the strategic behavior of political actors as a guiding light for the empirical study of mechanisms of unequal representation.