The relationship between economic redistribution and democracy has experienced a profound political shift in the past two decades, which we are only now beginning to analyze with any perspicacity or insight. This conceptual shift has consisted primarily in the ability of the administrations of Thatcher and Reagan, among others, to convince even the less well-off to support policies that seemed to widen the income gap, with the promise of securing greater absolute gains for all. Social reformers, who for the previous century had viewed democratic procedures and institutions as means of achieving a wider redistribution of wealth, were clearly flummoxed.