Not just money: unequal responsiveness in egalitarian democracies

What Drives Unequal Policy Responsiveness? Assessing the Role of Informational Asymmetries in Economic Policy-Making

“…Not even egalitarian political systems appear to ensure unbiased representation. For example, Elsässer et al (2018) and Schakel (2019) find that the degree of unequal responsiveness in Germany and the Netherlands is just as pronounced as in the United States. This work suggests that representation increases monotonically with income and that the economic elite dominates contemporary democratic politics.…”

“…These findings suggest a conditioning effect of the political–economic context, but they do not explain why the rich appear more influential even under the most favorable conditions. The most prominent explanation in these cases is that the poor are underrepresented in national parliaments, but disparities in political participation and interest-group mobilization also appear in discussions (Elsässer et al, 2018; Schakel, 2019).…”

“…If studying a diverse set of issues that covers economic, social, and foreign policies, for instance, it would be difficult to account for X as this would require accounting for factors like the state of the economy, changes in the structure of households (which may affect social policies), strategic national interests, and the foreign policy of other countries all at the same time and often over several decades. Consequently, many studies do not account for contextual factors at all (e.g., Elsässer et al, 2018; Gilens, 2012; Schakel, 2019), which can result in considerable context bias in normalβ true^ H .…”

“…In the United States, the economic elite appears to dominate policy-making, arguably an effect of money in politics (Bartels, 2008; Gilens, 2012; Gilens & Page, 2014). 1 In other advanced democracies, where political parties are far less reliant on private donations, scholars find strikingly similar patterns of unequal representation, and point to disparities in political participation and descriptive representation as possible causes (Bartels, 2017; Elsässer et al, 2018; Peters & Ensink, 2015; Schakel, 2019). Participational and descriptive disparities can clearly create some degree of inequality in political representation, but considering the strong electoral incentives of policy makers to represent low- and middle-class interests (Downs, 1957), it seems implausible that such disparities can lead to economic-elite domination of the democratic process.…”

Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress

“…Evidence of unequal representation has also been found for the House of Representatives, party platforms, and national and state policy (e.g., see Bartels 2016; Bhatti and Erikson 2011; Flavin 2012; Gilens 2012; Hertel-Fernandez, Mildenberger, and Stokes 2019; Lax, Phillips, and Zelizer 2019; Rhodes and Schaffner 2017; Rigby and Wright 2013). Beyond the American context, recent scholarship documents similar patterns across a range of political systems in advanced industrialized democracies (Bartels 2017; Elsässer, Hense, and Schäfer 2018). Thus, it may appear that unequal democracy is an inherent feature of capitalism.…”