Political Representation and Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Netherlands (1994–2010)

Aaldering, Loes

doi:10.1177/0032321715622788

Cited by 18 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(89 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…And yet there are good reasons to believe that inequalities are in fact magnified and not remedied further downstream in the policy-making process. Recent scholarship on unequal representation in the Netherlands has found similar patterns to the ones highlighted in our study when comparing the political orientations of education groups to policy positions espoused by the government (Aaldering, 2017). In response to her earlier seminal work on the descriptive representation of women and blacks, Mansbridge (2015) has recently called attention to descriptive representation based on socio-economic variables.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 85%

Ideological congruence and socio-economic inequality

Schakel

Hakhverdian

2018

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study examines whether or not political representation in the Netherlands is biased toward the rich and higher educated by comparing the political orientations of members of parliament to those of the electorate. The analyses reveal stark differences in the representation of different socio-economic groups. The political views of elected national representatives are far more similar to those of rich, higher educated citizens than to those with less income and education. Moreover, a longitudinal analysis reveals that inequalities in political representation have actually grown in recent years. We also show that the use of measures of ideological self-identification might to lead to highly misleading results regarding the nature of political representation as opposed to the use of issue items. We conclude that, despite a highly proportional electoral system, the views which are represented in the Dutch lower house of parliament contain major distortions of the views of the broader electorate.

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 85%

Ideological congruence and socio-economic inequality

Schakel

Hakhverdian

2018

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One of the hypotheses that might be explored within a broader analysis of mediators and moderators is that populist parties, and particularly right‐wing populist parties, enhance the representation of lower educated citizens (Aaldering 2017). This is commonly suggested to be the case; many sympathetic commentators describe populism as a ‘self‐correction of representative democracy' (Thomassen et al.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such political inequalities seem to extend to the important area of substantive representation (Pitkin 1967: 112–143). Studies in various European countries show that party positions are more congruent with the views of higher educated citizens than the views of those with lower levels of education (Lesschaeve 2016; Aaldering 2017; Rosset & Stecker 2019). However, despite the disproportionate presence of the higher educated throughout the political process, there is no direct evidence that highly educated citizens have a larger influence on government policy.…”

Section: Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Degrees of influence: Educational inequality in policy representation

Schakel

Pas

2020

European J Political Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Education plays an important role in the political, social and economic divisions that have recently characterised Western Europe. Despite the many analyses of education and its political consequences, however, previous research has not investigated whether government policy caters more to the preferences of the higher educated than to the preferences of the lower educated. We address this question using an original dataset of public opinion and government policy in the Netherlands. This data reveals that policy representation is starkly unequal. The association between support for policy change and actual change is much stronger for highly educated citizens than for low and middle educated citizens, and only the highly educated appear to have any independent influence on policy. This inequality extends to the economic and cultural dimensions of political competition. Our findings have major implications for the educational divide in Western Europe, as they reflect both a consequence and cause of this divide.

show abstract

“…In line with current research, we argue that incongruences might be linked to social inequalities and the fact that some groups get systematically better represented than others. Specifically, richer and better educated citizens are likely to get a representation bonus from their representatives or their governments (Aaldering, 2017;Bartels, 2008;Giger et al, 2012;Hakhverdian, 2015;Peters and Ensink, 2015).…”

Section: Introduction *mentioning

confidence: 99%

How well are citizens represented by their governments? Issue congruence and inequality in Europe

Rosset¹,

Stecker

2019

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study analyses congruence across various issues in 16 European democracies. Making use of public opinion and expert survey data, our analyses show that congruence between the policy preferences of citizens and the stances of governments is much more complex than what is revealed by studies focusing on ideology solely. Size and directions of incongruence are larger and more systematic on specific issues than on the left–right scale. On redistribution, citizens are more to the left than their governments, while popular support for European integration is systematically lower among citizens than among their representatives. Moreover, the relatively poor are particularly underrepresented on redistribution, while the preferences of the relatively lower educated are not well reflected in government preferences in relation to European integration. We interpret these results as being partly linked to a representation gap with privileged social groups enjoying higher levels of congruence with their government.

show abstract

Political Representation and Educational Attainment: Evidence from the Netherlands (1994–2010)

Cited by 18 publications

References 60 publications

Ideological congruence and socio-economic inequality

Ideological congruence and socio-economic inequality

Degrees of influence: Educational inequality in policy representation

How well are citizens represented by their governments? Issue congruence and inequality in Europe

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About