Research team
Expertise
1. I made my PhD about the relationship between media and politics. The focus was on agendasetting, i.e. the extent to which the media have influence on the topics/themes that politicians deal with. 2. My current research is about political representation and inequality in representation. Central questions are: How reactive are politicians vis-à-vis public opinion? And do politicians, when making policy choices, fail to take the preferences of weaker groups in society (e.g. the poor, lower educated, women) into account, in comparison with the preferences of stronger groups?
Poorly Understood, Deliberately Disregarded, or Well-Represented After All? The Scope and Mechanisms of the Unequal Political Representation of Disadvantaged Groups.
Abstract
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.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Walgrave Stefaan
- Fellow: Sevenans Julie
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
How Are Policymakers Influenced by What the Public Wants? An Experimental Study of the Effect of Public Opinion on Elite Preferences and Behavior.
Abstract
For a democracy to function well—it is often argued—representatives must listen to the people who elected them. More specifically, policy should represent citizens' preferences. A core task of political scientists is to examine whether this democratic assumption is met in reality. This project aims to contribute to the large body of scientific work on policy representation in three particular ways. First, it scrutinizes the causal effect of public opinion on political elites. A lot of research demonstrates that policy decisions and public opinion are associated. However, we lack strong evidence that this association results from elites' effort to act in a responsive way. Second, the project unravels the mechanisms underlying this representational process, which have largely remained unobserved. Extant research has theorized about why elites adapt their behavior—and even their own preferences—to public opinion, but these mechanisms have not been empirically tested. Finally, this project innovates methodologically. It uses survey-embedded experiments and in-depth interviews with political elites to study policy representation. Experiments guarantee researcher control, and are therefore well-suited to establish causality and tease out the mechanisms that drive the influence of public opinion on political elites. In-depth interviews help to interpret the findings and put them into context.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Walgrave Stefaan
- Fellow: Sevenans Julie
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project