Publication
Title
Lacking incentives, not information : why politicians tend to be less responsive to lower-income citizens
Author
Abstract
The principle that democracies give all citizens an equal voice is challenged by scholarly work showing that policies tend to be biased in favor of the more wealthy citizenry. One reason for such unequal representation lies in representatives being less responsive to the preferences of lower compared to higher-income citizens in their policy actions. Drawing on surveys with local elected representatives in Belgium and Sweden, this study zooms in on two potential drivers of unequal responsiveness. We look at the possibility that politicians have less incentives to be responsive to the less affluent, and less accurate information to do so in the first place. Concretely, we question politicians about the anticipation of accountability from lower- versus higher-income citizens (incentives) and make them estimate the policy positions of lower- and higher-income citizens (information). Moreover, we explore whether descriptive representation factors into these two possible drivers of unequal responsiveness by leveraging variation in politicians' backgrounds. First, we find that representatives anticipate significantly less electoral accountability from lower-income than from higher-income citizens. Moreover, politicians with a lower-class background hold less unequal accountability beliefs, hinting at the importance of more equal descriptive representation in mitigating inequality in responsiveness. Second, unequal responsiveness does not seem to be a matter of representatives having less accurate information about the opinions of lower-income citizens; politicians' estimations of different income groups' policy preferences are equally inaccurate.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Legislative studies quarterly / University of Iowa. Comparative Legislative Research Center. - Iowa City
Publication
Hoboken : Wiley , 2024
ISSN
0362-9805
DOI
10.1111/LSQ.12450
Volume/pages
(2024) , 20 p.
ISI
001164253600001
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
The author-created version that incorporates referee comments and is the accepted for publication version Available from 19.02.2025
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Law 
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 29.03.2024
Last edited 10.04.2024
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