COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

The foregoing analyses of redistributive actions and reactions in Canada, Britain, Australia and the US describe and explain how each governing party devised transfer programmes. Of course, these accounts are historically incomplete; like other works in comparative politics my aim is not detailed description but analytic narrative (Bates et al., 1998). Rather than registering events I focus on those critical junctures that set the preconditions or saw the main battles taking place.

In this chapter I review the material presented from an explicitly comparative perspective in order to highlight similarities and differences among the four countries. On the basis of their historical experience, it is possible to outline a set of propositions about the incentives for income redistribution in a liberal democracy.

The story of why we observe differences in inequality movements is necessarily incomplete because of the confluence of market, social, demographic, institutional and policy forces combined with behavioural changes by individuals, families and households. My account concentrated primarily on actor-centred institutionalism and showed that interdependent strategic action within party organisations sheds considerable light on redistributive games. The game theoretic models obviously did not determine the outcomes. What differed among the countries were the institutional settings within which those games were played.

I analysed how party leaders of different ideological persuasions reacted to problems that arose from fundamental changes in international socio-economic conditions.