Bringing the market in: an expanded framework for understanding popular responses to economic inequality

Abstract

There has been an upsurge in research on the politics of economic inequality in the 21st century. Discussions of popular responses to rising inequality have expanded in turn yet remain centered on support for explicit government redistribution of income from the rich to the poor. We argue that this focus may downwardly bias measurement of preferences for less inequality and propose an expanded framework that incorporates preferences regarding market institutions and policies that reduce labor market inequalities, which together can shed light on the public’s adherence to free market ideology. Empirically, we use original data to examine the US case, with a comparison to Sweden and Denmark. The results offer initial evidence of (1) the need for an expanded framework and research agenda in this field and (2) potentially broad-based support for policies that address economic inequality directly in the market sphere, contrary to key tenets of free market ideology.