ABSTRACT
Democracy is a political system that presumes a fairly egalitarian access to the political sphere and many consider economic inequality as its antithesis. This chapter presents evidence about the relationship between elite threat perceptions regarding inequality and political outcomes in Latin America. Elites from stronger democracies seem to worry much more about inequalities political effect than their counterparts in weak or eroding democracies. Despite not seeming to be more successful in dismissing inequality, they seem to do better in improving public goods. The in-depth analysis of the Brazilian case suggests some of the mechanisms by which elites manage to spot inequality as a threat without getting much involved in solving it. Brazil, as most Latin American countries, presents a multi-racial society with a strong record of income, educational, racial and political inequality and was considered a typical case of authoritarian modernization.
