Understanding Disadvantaged Citizens’ Evaluation of the Political System

• In Event: Institutions and Inclusion

Abstract

During the last decades, many authors have discussed the existence of a democratic deficit challenging representative democracy (Norris, 2011). Scholars have identified several challenges that representative democracy face such as the lack of congruence between policy preferences and the interest of a majority of the population (see Hay, 2007; Held, 2006; Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2002) or the decline of the function of democratic linkage and the relevance of political parties (see Dalton & Wattenberg, 2000; Katz & Mair, 1995; Mair & van Biezen, 2001; Scarrow, 2000). Beyond those challenges, recent scholarships highlighted the issue of unequal representation. Indeed, several studies support the fact that under-privileged citizens tend to have a lower influence on public policies and extensive research highlights the fact that disadvantaged groups such as women, ethnic minorities, lower educated citizens or economically disadvantaged citizens tend to be less represented than other privileged groups (Gilens, 2005; Jacobs and Page, 2005; Bartels, 2008; Giger, Rosset and Bernauer, 2012; Lefkofridi, Giger and Kissau, 2012; Rosset, 2016; Lesschaeve, 2017). However, to my best knowledge, very few papers have investigated the relationships between disadvantaged groups, political representation and the evaluation of the legitimacy of the political system.

The paper aims to first identify groups within the population who are politically underrepresented in terms of descriptive representation and to study if traditionally disadvantaged groups (women, ethnic minorities, lower educated citizens and poor citizens) are under-represented in terms of substantive representation (policy congruence). Second, the research seeks to analyze and discuss the relation/the consequences of under-representation on the evaluation of the political system’s legitimacy. Starting from the assumption that citizens are not always well informed of political parties’ positions due to little expected benefit compared to the cost of information gathering (Downs 1957) and might rely on shortcuts (Bartels, 1996) two other questions are investigated: Do substantively underrepresented citizens perceive that they are underrepresented in terms of issue congruence? Further, can the perception of being under-represented be associated with a negative evaluation of the legitimacy of the political system. Indeed, if one does not feel under-represented, the “objective” measure of issue congruence might be less relevant and to have different consequences on the attitudes toward the political system.

In order to make the analyses, the paper relies on the Belgian Election Study (2019) that is an original representative survey of 7609 respondents with several original items that allow to capture the “feeling of being represented” as well as issue congruence and evaluation of the legitimacy of the political system. After describing the data and identifying the disadvantaged groups, the paper first analyze citizens’ perception of being represented and if disadvantaged groups feel less represented than privileged groups of citizens. Then, using a Latent Profile Analysis the paper distinguishes the different profiles among the population regarding the evaluation of the political system’s legitimacy and analyze if disadvantaged groups tend more to be linked to profiles that are rather negative toward the legitimacy of the political system. Finally, regression analyses are used in order to explain how citizens evaluate the legitimacy of the political system and if disadvantaged groups tend to be more negative than their fellow citizens.

Author

• David Talukder, Université libre de Bruxelles