Do ministers’ occupational and social class backgrounds influence social spending?

Cabinet ministers and inequality

“…The findings contribute directly to the work of Carnes (2012), Carnes and Lupu (2015) and O'Grady (2018) who show that working‐class legislators in the United States, Latin American and the United Kingdom, respectively, have distinctly more redistributive economic preference than their colleagues with professional backgrounds in profit‐oriented professions. Similar effects have been found at the executive level across the Canadian regions (Borwein, 2021). This paper provides the first ever test on the policy effects of descriptive representation at the cabinet level across rich parliamentary democracies with highly disciplined political parties.…”

“…Carnes and Lupu (2015) find that legislators, across 18 countries in Latin America, from working-class backgrounds, much like citizens, are more supportive of state intervention than businesspeople and professionals. Similar effects are found in the United States (Carnes, 2012), the United Kingdom (O'Grady, 2018) but also in Canada's regional governments (Borwein, 2021). Despite variations in the exact coding of the class groups, most of the works concentrate on the distinctively pro-redistributive preferences of working-class legislators in comparison to their colleagues and derive conclusions for the substantive representation of the working class.…”

“…Consequently, occupation is most commonly chosen as the main determinant of class in studies of descriptive representation (Borwein, 2021; Carnes, 2012; Carnes & Lupu, 2015; O'Grady, 2018). Carnes and Lupu (2015) find that legislators, across 18 countries in Latin America, from working‐class backgrounds, much like citizens, are more supportive of state intervention than businesspeople and professionals.…”

“…The findings contribute to the literature on policy responsiveness (Gilens, 2012;Rasmussen et al, 2019;Schakel et al, 2020) by introducing a potentially significant mechanism through which governments become more or less responsive to the social welfare preferences of different income groups of citizens. It further contributes to the emerging literature on descriptive and substantive representation (Borwein, 2021;Carnes & Lupu, 2015;O'Grady, 2018) by being the first to empirically test the policy effects of ministers' class backgrounds across 18 parliamentary democracies. Last, the empirical findings have important implications for the broader debate on the political causes of inequality (Iversen & Soskice, 2019;Rueda, 2018).…”

“…This paper investigates whether the social class background of cabinet ministers acts as a transmission mechanism between social welfare preferences of low‐income citizens and social welfare policies in rich parliamentary democracies. Although there is some evidence that the class background of cabinet ministers matters for social welfare policy (Alexiadou, 2016; Borwein, 2021), there is no comparative work that systematically tests whether the class composition of cabinets is associated with more or less generous welfare policies. Importantly, there is no evidence that cabinets’ class composition could be a conditional factor, or mechanism, between citizens’ social welfare preferences and welfare policies.…”