Office-holding Premia and Representative Democracy

Abstract: I show that in a representative democracy, the predominance of high-income citizens in the legislature may imply that no legislator supports the redistribution policy low-income citizens prefer. Provided redistribution is the salient policy issue, the predominance of high-income citizens cannot arise if low-income citizens still support more redistribution once in office - they must join high-income citizens in opposing it. I formalize the underlying logic using office-holding premia. High-income citizens can only predominate the legislature if high premia induce low-income citizens to oppose more redistribution once in office. Therefore, all legislators oppose more redistribution, irrespective of their income background.