Inequality after the transition: political parties, party systems, and social policy in Southern and postcommunist Europe
In: Comparative politics
In: Oxford scholarship online
In: Political Science
An all-encompassing examination of the origins, increase, and persistence of inequality in new democracies. It challenges the conventional thinking found in much of the democratisation-inequality literature, and offers a new theory. It speaks simultaneously to literature of democratisation, party systems, social policy, and inequality to explain why democracies are not able to fulfill their promise to the disadvantaged and why they cannot achieve income equality. It investigates social policy programmes such as pensions, unemployment benefits, and other social transfers in Poland and the Czech Republic in post-communist Europe, and Turkey and Spain in Southern Europe