How conservative politicians persuaded voters to support tax cuts for the rich and corporations

My article "Winning the votes for institutional change" investigates how U.S. administrations successfully communicated and enabled radical, unequal income tax cuts during the Reagan and Bush Jr. eras--despite institutional conditions that typically constrain large-scale reform. While most OECD countries have reduced top tax rates and taxes on capital since the 1980s, the U.S. experience stands out for the scale and inequality of its reforms. These changes significantly eroded tax progressivity, benefiting a small economic elite while sidelining traditional principles of redistribution. Existing institutionalist theories emphasize continuity or slow, incremental change and cannot fully explain how such transformative reforms occurred or gained lasting support.

To address this puzzle, the article develops a novel framework grounded in discursive institutionalism, arguing that strategic compromise--defined as a deliberate discursive tool for conflict resolution--was key to securing and stabilizing radical tax change. Rather than viewing compromise as merely a legislative necessity, the article conceptualizes it as an active strategy employed by policymakers to align voter expectations, interest group concerns, and partisan dynamics. By linking foreground and background ideational abilities with strategic learning, the article shows how successful tax reform discourse blended cognitive arguments about policy efficacy with normative appeals to fairness and growth.

Empirically, the article analyzes the Reagan and Bush tax cuts using content analysis and case comparison. It finds that long-term policy stability depended on how well reformers used compromise strategies to build discursive overlap across party lines and sustain public support. While Reagan’s 1981 tax cut lacked enduring consensus and was partially reversed, later reforms showed more sophisticated discursive negotiation, contributing to their durability. The article concludes that compromise is not merely a by-product of divided government but a strategic resource that enables transformative policy change even under institutional constraints.