In this IPR Public Lecture, Professor Robert H. Wade - Professor of Political Economy at the LSE - builds on Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis' dictum "We must make our choice. We may have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both". Professor Wade reports on recent evidence on the degree of income concentration at the top of OECD countries and the political costs of inequality, and asks: how should social democratic movements appeal for public support in the context of the representational bias in favour of the wealthy?

This IPR Public Lecture took place on 19 November 2013