Economic and political inequality
A similar logic operates in Iran. Since the revolution in the 1980s, key sectors of the Iranian economy (oil, construction, infrastructure, etc.) have been dominated by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military organization loyal to the Supreme Leader. The IRGC controls a vast commercial empire, awarding contracts, monopolizing markets, and controlling exclusive access to capital and credit (Alfoneh, 2013). As in Russia, economic opportunity is linked to political loyalty and, in turn, both are mutually reinforcing. Through this consolidation of material resources, political opponents and minority groups are deliberately excluded from the Iranian economy, and by extension have their political influence greatly weakened (Najdi and Karim, 2024). Over time, this has created a system in which economic inequality empowers the political hierarchy: the wealthy enjoy privileged access to the state, while the poor and unconnected remain powerless. Again, economic inequality does not merely coexist with political inequality: it is created to ensure political inequality. One might argue that some authoritarian states attempt redistribution and even economic equity, suggesting the link is not inevitable. For example, China’s recent ‘common prosperity’ campaign appears to show government concern with excessive wealth concentration, and by extension, the concentration of influence that has occurred recently in China. But such initiatives rarely disrupt entrenched hierarchies of power. In China, wealth, regardless, remains tolerated when politically compliant, and redistribution serves to reinforce state control rather than expand civic equality (OECD, 2022). Efforts to reduce economic inequality under such authoritarian regimes may have some material economic effect, but they do not create political equality. Instead, such campaigns, as in China, often reassert a regime's authority by targeting its wealthiest opponents. In effect, this further confirms the existence between economic control and political control as regimes, like the CCP, restrict wealth to limit threats to their power. In authoritarian regimes, economic inequality does not passively lead to political inequality; it is actively created to inevitably consolidate power. Through means of patronage, exclusion, and conditional privilege, economic control is turned into political control. While the precise structure varies, the pattern is consistent: political inequality is not an anomaly, but the expected outcome of economic inequality. Next, and perhaps more relevantly to this question, while democracies rest on the principle of political equality, they inevitably rarely achieve it in practice, in large part due to their economic inequalities. Through campaign finance and lobbying, political participation, and media control, economic inequality inevitably produces problems with political inequality, even in highly developed democratic systems. One of the most glaring ways in which economic inequalities affect political equality is through campaign financing and lobbying. Individuals and groups with greater wealth always have greater ability to fund political campaigns, influence lawmakers, and shape policy outcomes. Access to power typically depends not on votes but on money; this is on relatively clear display in the USA, where the role of private money in politics has grown dramatically over recent decades. The controversial 2010
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