Replication Data for: The Political Representation of Economic Interests: Subversion of Democracy or Middle-Class Supremacy?

Rising inequality has raised concerns that democratic governments are no longer responding to majority demands, an argument we label the Subversion of Democracy Model (SDM). It comes in two varieties. One uses public opinion data to show that policies are strongly biased towards to the preferences of the rich; another uses macro-level data to show that governments are not responding to rising inequality. This paper critically reassesses the SDM. We point to potential biases and propose solutions that suggest a different interpretation of the data, which we label the Representative Democracy Model (RDM). We test the SDM against the RDM on both public opinion data and on a new dataset on fiscal policy and find that middle-class power has remained remarkably strong over time, even as inequality has risen. The rich have little influence on redistributive policies, and the democratic state appears not to be increasingly constrained by global capital.