Inequality has been a pressing issue for policy makers around the world for some time, and with it appearing to grow in the last few years, the urgency has intensified.  A new study from Trinity College Dublin perhaps emphasizes the nature of the challenge, as it finds that people living in the most economically unequal societies tend to support autocratic leaders.

The researchers collected data from 28 countries around the world to identify gaps in income between the richest and poorest members of those societies, with the aim being to understand how this inequality was reflected in the choice of political leaders in those nations.

“The results suggest that the growth in support for populist leaders who are happy to abandon democratic principles to achieve particular outcomes may partly be due to increasing levels of economic inequality,” the researchers explain.

Breakdown in social fabric

The researchers combined economic inequality data from the World Bank with a survey completed by several thousand students from 30 universities around the world.  The survey asked respondents their perceptions of the wealth gap in their country, and their perceptions of the social unity or breakdown in their local society.  They were also quizzed on whether they needed a strong leader to resolve such social issues.

The data suggests that there is a clear link between levels of economic inequality and the support for strong political leadership.  This apparent trend was further examined in a second phase of the research that explored how accepting participants would be of a strong leader that generally broke rules and ignored democratic values to try and correct these social issues.

The participants for this second phase included several hundred Australian adults, with most of the same measures and control used as in the first survey undertaken.  As before, the results suggested a clear correlation between inequality and a desire for strong leadership, even if that meant the leader broke the democratic norms of that country.

“This strengthens our reasoning that economic inequality perceptions enhance the feeling that society is breaking down … fueling a desire for a leader who will restore order (by whatever means necessary),” the authors say.

Finding the link

The researchers finally attempted to explore why this apparent connection existed.  A fresh group of volunteers were recruited and asked to imagine themselves as middle-income consumers in a fictional society.  Each volunteer was randomly assigned to conditions whereby the wealth gap was either relatively small or relatively wide.

They were then asked to share their thoughts on the social cohesion of this fictional society and whether a strong leader would help resolve any issues they saw.  Interestingly, the volunteers in the high inequality condition perceived the wealth gap to be much larger than their peers in the low inequality condition, but they also felt this resulted in the kind of social breakdown that only a strong leader could fix.

“Our research shows that economic inequality is not only associated with increased criminality, poor mental and physical health, and lower levels of generalized trust,” the researchers conclude, “but that it may also affect social behavior and political attitudes.”