Why are Representatives More Responsive to the Rich (even in Sweden)?

• In Event: Inequalities in Representation: The Ability of Elites to Represent Citizens

Abstract

Previous research suggest that politicians show more responsiveness to the rich than to the middle class and the poor. Given that that there are many potential votes in the latter groups, and politician have an incentive to try to get reelected, this is puzzling. This paper explores this issue by studying the pinion-policy link in Swedish politics from 1956 to 2014. We use data on support for about 300 policy proposals in combination with data on to what extent these proposals were implemented. Previous studies reveal that responsiveness is biased in accordance with the preferences of high-income citizens in countries such as the US, Germany and the Netherlands. The first part of the paper establishes that responsiveness is biased in accordance with the preferences of high-income citizens also in Sweden. The second part of the paper aims to explain why this is the case. First, we investigate whether there is an increasing diffusion of policy preferences between the rich and poor over time; Is the reason why the poor and middle class get worse responsiveness that their preferences are less articulated and more diffuse? Second, we analyze whether representatives tendency to provide less responsiveness to the poor and the middle class than the rich is because they have might have worse knowledge about their preferences? They might simply not know what the poor want to the same extent as they know what the rich want. Third, we study how responsiveness is related to the saliency of issues; do the rich and poor get what they want to a different degree for salient and non-salient issues? And can higher responsiveness to the rich be explained by the fact that the issues where they have strong opinions are also more salient? We combine survey data with data on implementation of policies and complement this data with an experiment on politicians knowledge about policy preferences in different income groups as well as machine learning based analyses of the salience of different issues.

Author

• Mikael Persson, University of Gothenburg