Poorly Understood, Deliberately Disregarded, or Well-Represented After All? The Scope and Mechanisms of the Unequal Political Representation of Disadvantaged Groups.

A key challenge facing representative democracies today is inequality in political representation. Research has shown that political decision-making is less responsive to the preferences of poorer, lower-educated and female citizens than to those of the rich, the higher-educated and of men. This project builds on these alarming findings and makes two contributions. First, it breaks new ground by empirically accounting for the different ways in which "good representation" can come about. Politicians may represent citizens well by listening to what they want (their 'a priori' preferences), or by taking unpopular decisions in citizens' best interests and then explaining these decisions well (aiming for 'a posteriori' approval). This project considers both, as a more full-fledged test of unequal representation. Second, the project sheds light on the mechanisms that cause unequal representation. Inequalities may arise when politicians lack information about what disadvantaged groups want (citizens are poorly understood) or when they lack the motivation to be responsive (groups are deliberately disregarded). These mechanisms will be disentangled here by directly studying these cognitive processes. Concretely, the project combines (1) an analysis of public opinion and policy with (2) a large-scale public opinion survey on 'a posteriori' policy approval and (3) a survey, experiment and interview with politicians. The results will help to fight inequality more effectively.

Keywords:PARTY POLITICS, PUBLIC OPINION, POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

Disciplines:Political inequality, Political communication, Public opinion, Party politics, Political representation, executive and legislative politics