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Class Policy Moods: A New Approach to Responsiveness Inequality

Representation
Quantitative
Public Opinion
Xavier Romero-Vidal
Carlos III-Juan March Institute of Social Sciences – IC3JM
Xavier Romero-Vidal
Carlos III-Juan March Institute of Social Sciences – IC3JM

Abstract

The present paper puts forward a new measure of government responsiveness that accounts for different income group preferences using data from the Global Public Opinions Project. In recent times, the relationship between economic inequality and political representation has received considerable scholarly attention. However, the scarcity of data has hindered the systematic study of the unequal influence of income groups on government decisions. A recent study on Germany has shown a striking association between political decisions and the opinions of the rich, but no association or even a negative one for the opinions of the poor (Elsässer, Hense, & Schäfer, 2017). Furthermore, there have been comparative studies that have measured the influence of low-income citizens to find that responsiveness to citizens’ preferences is skewed in favour of affluent citizens (Donnelly & Lefkofridi, 2014; Bartels, 2017). Nevertheless, the evolution of unequal representation over time remains largely unexplored. In order to fill this gap, I estimate two policy moods using data for two European countries included in the Global Public Opinions Project: Great Britain, with relatively high inequality rates, and Sweden, with lower income inequality. Relying on the Dyad Ratio Algorithm (Stimson, 1991), I create a policy mood for high-income citizens and another one for low-income ones. This new social class mood allows us to measure how public spending responds to each of them, and whose preferences prevail. By doing so, I create a low-income responsiveness measure for each year and country, combining a cross-sectional and longitudinal approach. I compare the developments of responsiveness inequality in each country and discuss some of their main implications.