Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Shared Class, Shared Opinion? Policy Preference Congruence Between Citizens and Legislators

Publication date2024-10-26
First online date2024-10-26
Abstract

Recent studies have shown that policymakers and policy outcomes in advanced democracies are biased against the preferences of less affluent and working‐class citizens. One reason for this inequality in substantive representation might be that most policymakers are well‐off themselves. In this paper, we explore the effect of shared class background on the congruence between legislators' and citizens' policy preferences. To do so, we rely on original data from surveys conducted among citizens and active legislators in Switzerland. We focus on six economic and welfare policy proposals where we find differences in opinion between social classes. When we match legislators' and citizens' opinion in a one‐to‐many relationship, we find that social class matters more for lower social classes than for the more affluent, at least for some policy proposals.

Keywords
  • Political representation
  • Social classes
  • Democracy
  • Inequality
  • Economic policy
  • Welfare policy
Citation (ISO format)
WUEST, Reto, HELFER, Luzia, VARONE, Frédéric. Shared Class, Shared Opinion? Policy Preference Congruence Between Citizens and Legislators. In: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 2024, p. spsr.12637. doi: 10.1111/spsr.12637
Main files (1)
Article (Published version)
Identifiers
Journal ISSN1424-7755
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166downloads

Technical informations

Creation27/10/2024 02:30:12
First validation28/10/2024 08:14:50
Update time03/12/2024 09:48:31
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