Redistributive Debates Across the World

We use large language models to classify over 700,000 speech excerpts from 36 national legislatures to study redistributive debates across the world. There is no association between the volume of the redistributive debate and societal redistribution: redistributive countries do not debate redistribution more, nor are their debates more tilted toward pro-redistributive positions. Parliamentarians in more redistributive countries instead use different types of arguments, particularly justifying redistribution through systemic benefits rather than individual need, and emphasizing the societal consequences of inequality rather than strict fairness. They also discuss taxes more than transfers, and rely more on positive-sum rather than zero-sum framing, although these associations are weaker.  The emphasis on systemic benefits is particularly pronounced in the Nordic countries. Across countries, fairness arguments contain more emotional appeals, anger, and narrative evidence, while externality arguments contain more logical appeals, empirical evidence, and consensus-oriented framing. In a survey experiment, we show that argument type causally affects how respondents react to redistributive arguments. Overall, our results suggest that more redistributive societies may not be more fairness-minded, but may instead differ in their beliefs about the systemic benefits of redistribution.