 One focus of concern for the relational egalitarian is with ensuring the effectiveness of citizens’ political liberties. In a political democracy, all citizens have rights to vote, to campaign, and to stand for political office in competitive elections (Dahl 1998). It seems likely that poverty can significantly diminish the effectiveness with which individuals can exercise these rights (for relevant empirical research on this issue, see Krishna 2006, Mood and Jonsson 2015). Someone who is wrapped up in the struggle for basic material well-being might simply lack the time and energy needed to focus on political issues. In addition, they will be less able to afford the monetary costs associated with political participation, e.g., paying party membership fees, making campaign contributions, and so on. This is bad for political democracy. It means that certain viewpoints and interests are not heard, so that policy becomes unfairly skewed against these viewpoints and interests. Hence it can be argued that it is straightforwardly good for a political democracy to enact a social minimum. By relieving the pressure of poverty, an enacted social minimum will enable all citizens to participate effectively in the democratic process, thereby ensuring that this process is indeed genuinely  democratic.[6]