Inequality in the public priority perceptions of elected representatives

Abstract

Democratic representation presumes that politicians know what the public wants. Ideally, politicians have accurate perceptions not only of which policies citizens prefer (positions), but also of which issues citizens prefer to be dealt with first (priorities). How accurate are elites’ perceptions of the public’s priorities? And, if elite estimations are incorrect, is there inequality in these perceptions? Using data from two surveys – one measuring citizens’ priorities and one gauging representatives’ perceptions thereof – in Belgium, Canada and Israel, this article shows that politicians’ perceptions of the extent to which citizens want them to undertake action on various issues are not entirely accurate. Importantly, politicians’ perceptions appear to be biased towards the preferences of the male, highly educated, and politically interested citizens. These key findings apply to all three countries under study. When it comes to gender specifically, it is found that female politicians’ estimations are no less skewed towards male preferences than male politicians’ estimations, which suggests the skew is not the consequence of bad descriptive representation but rather of certain segments of citizens being more politically active. All in all, the results show that inequality in representation might partly be driven by underlying perceptual inaccuracy.

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1928830 .

Keywords:

• Elected representatives
• inequality
• public priorities
• perceptual bias
• representation

Keywords:

• Elected representatives; inequality; public priorities; perceptual bias; representation; survey research

Acknowledgement

We are grateful for the constructive criticism of the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In line with an agenda-setting perspective, we use the word ‘priority’ to refer to the perceived importance of political action being taken on an issue. This means that an issue is deemed salient and that it must be dealt with prior to other issues (see: Green-Pedersen and Walgrave 2014).

2 In the Israeli case, 18 of the 62 Members of the Knesset (MK) actually were ex-MKs. They were interviewed right after the Israeli national elections on the 17 March 2015, so their non-reelection was very recent and, we suppose, did not affect their answers. The other 44 Israeli interviews were with actual MKs, some of them were brand new to the job. The reported response rate is calculated for the actual MKs only.

3 407 politicians were asked to rate seven news stories. Due to stories that were unnoticed (25%) and additional missings on some of the key questions, the final N is 1,994.

4 Due to missings on key variables such as educational level or political interest, the final number of citizens used to calculate their average real priority is generally a little bit lower.

5 One story was exceptionally rated by only four women and is therefore left out of these analyses.

6 Significance levels were determined via linear regressions predicting citizens’ priority rating (DV) by gender (IV). Similar tests are conducted for education and political interest below.

7 One story was not rated by citizens from all levels of interest and is therefore excluded from these analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council [Advanced Grant ‘INFOPOL’, N° 295735] and the Research Fund of the University of Antwerp [Grant N° 26827]. Stefaan Walgrave, University of Antwerp, is principal investigator of the INFOPOL project, which has additional teams in Israel, led by Tamir Sheafer, and Canada, led by Stuart Soroka and Peter Loewen. Additionally, this work was supported by the FWO (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen) through postdoctoral funding of Julie Sevenans (grantee number: 12X6218N) and predoctoral funding of Karolin Soontjens (grantee number: 11G8819N).

Notes on contributors

Julie Sevenans

Julie Sevenans is a Postdoctoral Researcher in research group M²P at the University of Antwerp. Her research focuses on political representation and political communication. While conducting this research, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher of the FWO (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen). [[email protected]]

Karolin Soontjens

Karolin Soontjens is a Doctoral Candidate in research group M²P at the University of Antwerp. She is financed by the FWO (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen). Her research focuses on political representation and political communication. [[email protected]]

Stefaan Walgrave

Stefaan Walgrave is a Full Professor in research group M²P at the University of Antwerp. His research focuses on political representation and political communication. [[email protected]]