Why Left Governments Redistributed More: Veto Players Matter More Than Capital Flight

📝 What the Article Argues

This article challenges the view that Latin America's recent leftist redistributive surge was driven by region-specific traits. Using theoretical models about inequality in democracies and how economic and institutional structures shape policy, the argument is that redistribution was strongest where capital mobility was low and where there was no pro-elite legislative veto player blocking reform.

📊 How the Claim Was Tested

• Original time-series–cross-section regression models of social spending
• Data cover thirteen Latin American countries from 2003 to 2015
• Key variables include social spending, ideological distance between the president and a pro-elite veto player, and measures of capital mobility

🔎 Key Findings

• Strong evidence that social spending falls as the ideological distance between the president and a pro-elite legislative veto player grows.
• Only weak evidence that greater capital mobility reduces the president's ability to increase social spending (i.e., capital mobility only modestly attenuates the veto-player effect).
• Overall, the empirical tests provide partial support for the theoretical expectation that both capital mobility and veto players condition redistributive intensity.

💡 Why It Matters

These findings imply that institutional constraints—especially the presence and ideology of legislative veto players—help explain cross-country variation in leftist redistribution during the "left turn." Capital mobility appears less decisive than commonly thought, which shifts attention from region-level explanations to country-level institutional dynamics.