Richard Van Weelden (University of Pittsburgh)

Inequality, Polarization, and Culture Wars

Joint with Bocconi University

We study an election between a “Left” versus a “Right” party that compete on both taxes and cultural policies. Voters cast ballots and make campaign contributions, with the election determined by a combination of electoral support and money. When the parties divide solely on taxes, Left receives support from the poor majority while Right is supported by the wealthy minority and thus secures the bulk of the donations. When Right’s monetary advantage is high, Left seeks to create cultural divergence to raise money from wealthy social liberals, even if this requires staking out unpopular positions. When their monetary advantage is smaller, Right wants to create polarization on cultural issues to appeal to poor voters. A “culture war” can emerge even if income and cultural preferences are uncorrelated. Left initiates culture wars when inequality and economic polarization are high, preferring “niche” issues which strongly motivate a small minority, while Right initiates on issues with broader disagreement when inequality and economic polarization are low. Finally, we show how culture wars affect polarization over economic issues.

Joint work with Peter Buisseret.