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This paper argues that the effect of income inequality on economic growth depends on the level of democracy in a country and whether people believe that redistribution is an essential component of the democratic process. The paper uses the World Values Survey to focus on countries where the majority believe that taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor an essential component of democracy, and on countries where the majority believe that the rich do not buy elections in their country. Using the threshold estimation technique introduced by Hansen (1999), the analysis suggests the presence of a statistically significant threshold income inequality level, below which democracy does not have a statistically significant effect on growth, and above which an increase in the dose of democratization has a statistically significant negative effect on economic growth. The interpretation is that in countries where income inequality is high, and the majority believe that taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor is an essential component of democracy, a higher level of democratic governance allows people to support redistribution policies which can deter investment and economic growth.

How does public participation in planning and environmental governance engender democratic legitimacy? Drawing a distinction between the optimistic and critical participation literature, I argue that both these strands of research have tended to neglect the public's perspective on this question. This oversight has, in effect, produced strongly normative and essentialist understandings of democratic legitimacy that treat legitimicy as intrinsic to either process or substance of participatory governance. Proceeding from an anti-essentialist understanding of democratic legitimacy, which primarily relies on contemporary social perceptions and expectations of democratic institutions, I outline a normatively agnostic framework for exploring how legitimacy is engendered through participation. Using this framework to investigate citizen experiences of participation processes in Sweden, I highlight how democratic legitimacy can gainfully be understood as a multidimensional, provisional, and contingent quality that individual citizen participants "confer" and "retract" in a plurality of ways. Based on this, I conclude by suggesting that sustained research engagement with the public's expectations and experiences of participatory governance can reveal critical insights into the potentials and challenges for realizing democratic planning outcomes.

How does public participation in planning and environmental governance engender democratic legitimacy? Drawing a distinction between the optimistic and critical participation literature, I argue that both these strands of research have tended to neglect the public's perspective on this question. This oversight has, in effect, produced strongly normative and essentialist understandings of democratic legitimacy that treat legitimicy as intrinsic to either process or substance of participatory governance. Proceeding from an anti-essentialist understanding of democratic legitimacy, which primarily relies on contemporary social perceptions and expectations of democratic institutions, I outline a normatively agnostic framework for exploring how legitimacy is engendered through participation. Using this framework to investigate citizen experiences of participation processes in Sweden, I highlight how democratic legitimacy can gainfully be understood as a multidimensional, provisional, and contingent quality that individual citizen participants "confer" and "retract" in a plurality of ways. Based on this, I conclude by suggesting that sustained research engagement with the public's expectations and experiences of participatory governance can reveal critical insights into the potentials and challenges for realizing democratic planning outcomes. ; QC 20200319