Redistribution

MALDONADO, MARTÍN A

International Encyclopedia of Political Science

Sage Publishing

Año: 2011; p. 3082 - 3084

The term redistribution refers to the criteria and the mechanisms that operate the authoritative allocation of valuable assets in a given society. In the narrow sense used in political science, it refers to the value-driven, commanding intervention of the state in society to extract resources from some groups (mainly in the form of taxes) to give them to other groups (using public expenditure and other redistributive mechanisms). Thinkers on the left of the ideological spectrum argue that the state should have an active role in this process while those on the right hold that the interplay between agents in a free market is the most efficient mechanism of distribution so the state should limit its intervention to guaranteeing a peaceful coexistence between citizens. In what follows there are clarifications on the scope and scientific usage of the term redistribution, a recount of the historical evolution of the concept, a classification of political science’s main theories on the role of the state and the dynamics of competition among groups and a brief reference to empirical indicators on redistribution.