Exploring the linkage between political participation and policy preference representation in 27 European democracies1

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Daniela Sirinic2

sirinic_daniela@ceu-budapest.edu

Central European University

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Work in progress

Please, do not cite or quote

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by the EUROCORES Programme of the European Science Foundation

1. Introduction

Political engagement and political representation are the essence of democratic practices today. They are the ways the citizens are „made present‟ (Pitkin 1967) and the tools that connect demos and kratos. Moreover they have both been regarded as guardians of democracy and mechanisms for the achievements of democratic equality (Dahl 2006; Beitz 1989; Warren 2002). With the emergence of new democracies and the recent premature warnings on the decay of democratic practices in long-standing democracies the quest for proper understanding of democratic mechanisms of participation and representation and their impact on overall political equality and quality of democracy has been intensified (Bennett 2006; Dahl 2006; Verba 2004).

It has been argued that the transfer of social and economic inequalities into formal political process results in unequal participation and representation. For instance, groups with low education and low income status are often found to have lower propensity to participate in politics (Lijphart 1997; Junn 2000; Griffin and Newman 2008; Gallego 2007; Macedo 2005). These are the reason why this paper asks: Do inequalities in political representation follow from inequalities in political participation? Namely, if we assume that electoral process, as the pillar of democracy, has an impact on political equality then that impact should be assessed empirically. In general, the extent to which inequality in participation affects the inequality in representation should indicate whether the sources of political inequality are to be searched for within institutional opportunities or outside of the narrow political process.

Thus, this paper proposes an analytical framework to study the linkage between inequality in political participation and inequality in political representation, mediated by institutional context, through a large scale comparative analysis of real-existing democracies.

1 Paper presented at the workshop on “Inequality and Representation in Europe” at the Dreiländertagung in Basel on January 13th and 14th 2011

2 Daniela Sirinic is a 2nd year PhD Candidate at the Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations, Central European University. She is also a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Imperfections of Democracy (www.disc.ceu.hu).

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Although the mechanisms of participation and representation have been commonly addressed as complex and not independent of each other, one could hardly find any attempt to analyse them together. Most of the theories in political representation are concerned with the nature of the relationship between the electors and the elected after the elections have been held. In addition, political participation has rarely been questioned for its representativeness within the stream of political representation research presumably because generally high electoral turnout, the one-man-one-vote rule, and the relatively modest social inequalities of electoral participation are expected to take care of the issue to the extent possible at all. Yet, following the seminal works on equality in political participation (Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995; Verba, Nie and Kim 1978; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993) it will be suggested here that representativeness in political participation should be considered as the first „facet‟ of representation and should be analysed as such.

Both the literature on inequalities in political participation and political representation has focused on within country patterns of inequalities (exceptions include comparative studies of women‟s representation, however those studies mainly focus only on parliamentary representation of women as members of parliament, see for instance Diaz (2005) or Caul (1999)). In addition, until recently, much of the scholarly literature on electoral participation assumed that the sources of participatory inequality should not be analysed separately as they evidently can be explained by the same factors which are found relevant for the increase in voting turnout. Cross-country patterns of within-country variation of inequalities have thus rarely been analysed systematically (for rare examples see Anduiza Perea 2002; Gallego 2007). However, as it will be presented later on, significant research effort has been dedicated to the analysis of under-representation in various forms of political participation and that body of literature will serve as foundation for this paper.

As for the research on political representation, large comparative studies have not yet been conducted (Wessels 1999). Most of the research on political representation was conducted either on a single country case studies (such as Holmberg and Esaiasson 1996, on Sweden or Converse and Pierce 1986, on France), or as an attempt to compare several countries with different institutional structures (such as Wessels 1999). This was the result of the lack of available data on the positions of parliamentarians, of the debate on the proper operationalization and measurement of representation in general, and as a result of country specific representation modes which were regarded as non-comparable.

Furthermore, aside from several studies that were interested in the effect of contextual factors, such as Dalton‟s (1985) study on the organization of political parties, Huber and Powell‟s (1994) work on the representation and two visions of democracy or Vanberg and Powell‟s (2000) analysis on the different electoral systems, rarely have political scientist analysed the wider consequences of the selection and development of intermediary institutions on the achievements of participatory and representatorial equality without focusing only on median voters. Thus, this paper will also discuss institutional settings and mechanisms that are expected to either enhance or reduce the levels of inequality in representation.

Paper structure can be summarised now. Although the main research question should be clear it is expected that the concepts that will be analysed, mainly unequal participation and unequal representation, are not a part of the every-day political science repertoire. Thus the first part of the paper is used to clarify the outcome variable – unequal representation and secondly, to clarify the illusive concept of unequal representation as the main explanatory variable. Second part contains an outline of the analytical model and it is followed by the detailed explanations on the expected mechanisms. Last part of the paper provides a pilot analysis in which the patterns of main variables are captured in 27 European democracies. It is also important to note that the paper does not provide tests of the main hypothesis it proposes. I only suggest expected mechanisms, discuss the

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measurement of the main concepts and at the end address possible shortcomings of the suggested framework.

2. Unequal representation

The concept of political representation, understood as the crux of liberal democratic ideals, is misleadingly simple (Dovi 2008). It contains the classical paradox. Although we all agree on what it is supposed to mean, being the activity of making citizens' voices, opinions, and perspectives “present” in the public policy making processes (Pitkin 1967), it is nevertheless poorly specified in political theory and divergently operationalized in empirical analysis. Different standards of representation, outlined in the literature have sometimes resulted in mutually incompatible assessments. Moreover, as the tool for establishing the legitimacy of decision making and a way in which the institutional incentives of government responsiveness are designed, the logic of political representation remains a constant puzzle.

To untangle the web of representation theories I will first outline two generations of the theories of political representation. The seminal work of Pitkin (1967) has been regarded as the rare example of a normative work that has served as touchstone of thirty years of empirical research. Pitkin's main contribution is the detailed elaboration of the different ways in which the term of representation is used. She compares it to the „a rather complicated, convoluted, three–dimensional structure in the middle of a dark enclosure.” (1967:10). She identifies several views of representation: formalistic representation, standing for representation (descriptive representation and symbolic representation) and „acting for‟ or substantive representation (Pitkin 1967).i Aside from the first generation theory, mainly Pitkin‟s contribution, the second generation of both theoretical and empirical work on representation moves away from the linguistic approach to the meaning of representation and focuses on different understandings of a) who is the party that is representing (representative, party, movement, agency, etc.); b) who is being represented (constituents, all citizens, minorities, etc.); c) what is being represented (opinions, perspectives, interest, etc.) and d) what is the setting in which the representation is taking place (the institutional boundaries, constituency, state, federal state, etc.).

Consequently, main empirical research agendas can be distinguished as individual unit approaches (or dyadic representation), meso approaches and as collective unit approaches. First includes the analysis of the congruence in preferences and ideology either between individual representatives and their constituency, second between individual parties and their voters and the third approach includes analysis of the congruence between the citizens and the representatives (as collective entities) at the national level. The individual level models (such as famous Miller and Stokes 1963) have been mainly applied to the United States whereas the meso-level approach prevails in the research on European parliamentary systems (Esaiasson 2000).

Although each approach has its benefits and shortcomings, I will focus on the representation of social groups at the national level, i.e. following the studies like Hill and Leighley (1992); Gilens (2005, 2009), Soroka and Wlezien (2004, 2005, 2008), Stimson (2004); Stimson et al (1995) Adams and Ezrow (2007, 2009) and in some ways even Hajnal and Trounstine (2005), Hajnal (2009), Griffin (2005). It has been argued that models of collective representation by parties or governments at the national level yield more positive assessments of the extent of representativeness than individual or meso-level approaches (Thomassen 1994). Moreover, Esaiasson (1999) and Weissberg (1978) directly compared effects of local and national levels and have shown that the national level seems to be much more important than the local level in parliamentary as well as in presidential systems.

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However, while empirical approaches to political representation, by focusing only on a particular aspect of representation, fail to offer a comprehensive understanding of overall political representation and do not take into account the possibility of measuring more stages of representation in a single study, normative approaches of the first generation generate underspecified definitions. As one of the main proponents of the second generation of political theory of representation, Mansbridge (2003) tries to bridge the gap between theory and empirical approaches and argues that the normative understandings of representation have not kept up with recent empirical research on political representation. In order to reduce the gap in the literature she introduces new concepts: promissory, anticipatory, gyroscopic and surrogate representation types. While promissory representation resembles Pitkin‟s formalistic representation, other modes of representation are quite novel. Anticipatory representation focuses on the type of relationship where representatives 'try to please the future voters' (2003: 517). In gyroscopic representation, representatives “look within” to derive from their own experience conceptions of interest and principles to serve as a basis for their action. Finally, surrogate representation is what we could call non-territorial representation. It occurs when a legislator represents constituents outside of their districts.

Three contributions of Mainsbrigde are relevant for this proposal. Firstly she emphasizes the multidimensional nature of representation and the need to operationalize representation in terms of different modes of representation. Secondly, she moves away from the classical territorial conception of representation arguing that the representative can represent interest outside of his/her constituency (surrogate representation) which also implies that representation ought to be understood not only as a dyadic relationship between constituents and representatives but as a systemic process. And finally she envisages representation as a continuous process that involves more than interest aggregation. She calls for approach that will incorporate new understandings of representation as a process of deliberation through different channels of democratic politics, involving media, systems of socialization and civil society. (Mainsbridge 2003) These arguments will be followed in the research design as the paper will focus not on dyadic-territorial but on collectivistic representation and not only on elections as potential determinants of unequal representation, but also on other types of non-electoral participation taking the deliberative nature of representative process seriously.

However, both Pitkin (1967) and Mainsbridge‟s (2003) definitional attempts fail short under empirical lens. Although theoretically plausible, these distinctions can hardly be utilized in a cross-country empirical research. For instance, Mainsbridge‟s surrogate representation, exemplified in the cases where an individual member of parliament represents constituents outside of his own district, although interesting proposition, can only be analyzed if we have individual-level information on of representatives respondents find to represent them best. Same could be argued for symbolic representation which could at best be operationalized as descriptive representation, namely as a measure of correspondence between the citizens and members of parliament based on socio-economic and demographic characteristics. In addition gyroscopic representation overlaps with both the promissory and the anticipatory type and only differs from them in some aspects of largely unobservable mental processes assumed on the part of representatives. On the other hand, remaining types, promissory and anticipatory, if taken for analysis do not include the symbolic element of representation.

Given the conflicting theoretical and empirical suggestions I will summarize the main points of both generations of research and suggest a more exhaustive, but not overlapping, construct of representation which includes: a) the representation of existing (and inevitably somewhat inarticulate) citizen demand regarding what policies to follow (policy preference representation closest to „promissory representation‟ by Mainsbridge); b) representation of anticipated citizen

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demand regarding political outputs (interest representation closest to „anticipatory representation‟ by Mainsbridge); c) representation of (largely inarticulate) citizen demands on what kind of people should represent them, through what kind of process, with which symbols and values it should refer to etc. (symbolic-procedural representation). In addition, these modes of representation can also be understood as input (preference representation), both input and output (symbolic-procedural representation) and output representation (interest representation) of the political process.

Moreover, since the main intention of this paper lies in assessing the linkage between inequality in political participation and inequality in political representation, it is relevant to understand the notion of unequal representation. For the purposes of this analysis I will define unequal representation as a situation in which overall representation of one group is lower than the overall representation of another group compared on a same characteristic. Overall representation is understood as sum of representation of existing citizen demand on policies, representation of anticipated citizen demand on outputs and representation of largely inarticulate citizen demand based on symbols, values and similar. Example should clarify the notion. If we compare two groups on the basis of age we should be able to see whether there are significant differences in representation of young versus old citizens, or young, middle-aged and old citizens. If there is a difference in representation, for instance if the preferences of older citizens are closer to the preferences of legislature (taken as collective in this example) we would conclude that there is a gap in representation of the youth and their messages (being interest or specific preferences) are either not travelling well through the democratic channels or they are being ignored by the representatives.

3. Unequal participation

Unequal political participation is understood as a systematic pattern whereby some groups of citizens show different rates of political participation why they may also conceivably expect partly different policies and other outputs from elected office holders.ii Since is expected that not only inequality in voting, as the backbone of electoral process, but also the inequality in other relevant types of participation, should have an influence on the inequalities in political representation both electoral (voting) and non-electoral political participation (other forms of participation such as demonstrations, boycott, petition and internet participation) should be analyzed. By analysing only electoral participation one would neglect the complexity of the contemporary democratic process and would ignore the recent expansion of the political action repertoire. The expansion of participation in other, non electoral, modes also requires an analysis of equal participation opportunities and the impact of participatory inequalities on the equal representation of citizens (Marien, Hooghe and Quintelier 2010).

As Gallego (2007) explains, inequality in participation is an aggregate concept. The demographic and socio-economic characteristics on individual level can only influence the propensity of an individual to participate or not, but we cannot say that he/she is unequal. However, if we know that the same characteristics influence the decision to participate of many individuals then we can talk about unequal participation. This is especially the case when a personal characteristic consistently influences participation over time and space and makes otherwise under-privileged also less likely to exercise political influence via democratic channels. Furthermore, not only under-represented groups suffer from unequal participation. As elections are decision making procedure that has an impact on collective outcomes, „the victims‟ of the unequal turnout will be all those, irrespective of their personal characteristics, who share same preferences as under-represented citizens since the expression of the preferences will be biased towards those who are numerically more present (Toka 2003).

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Finally, since the existence of inequalities is dependent on the selection of politically relevant characteristic on which we assess the under-representation of certain groups, it is important to define the „political relevance‟ at this point. In their seminal study, Verba, Schlozman and Brady (1995) analyzed the inequality patterns in the USA. They identify politically relevant characteristics as those „whose visibility to a public official might make a difference in their responses to citizen participation‟ (1995:170). As the political agenda and social structure changes over time so does the range of politically relevant characteristics. As a threshold for deciding on the saliency of the characteristic they suggest that the group characteristic should be pertinent to the political conflict and the group that is delimited by that characteristic should be clearly distinguishable from other groups (Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995). Also, it is relevant to see whether the group members share similar attitudes on a specific issue and whether the distribution of their preferences is different than the distribution of the preferences of the overall electorate.

4. Chain of political inequality: on causes and consequences

Given that the main focus of this paper is to explore the possibilities of analysing the relationship between inequality in political participation and inequality in political representation a further and hitherto barely research question arises: How much inequality in political representation follows from the participatory inequality (cf. Hill and Leighley 1992; Griffin and Newman 2005)? Common sense suggests that if the voices of some already disadvantaged groups in society are not heard in the decision making process, then the results should be biased against those groups. However, we know little about the way in which participatory messages are received by decision makers, and even less about the circumstances under which these messages or „voices‟ actually make a difference.

There is an open possibility that political participation has a minor influence on political representation. After all, membership in the demographic and socio-economic groups is fundamental but it is not a key for explaining political participation (Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995), and differences in demographic characteristics among participants and non-participants do not imply differences in preferences (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980). Elderly do not necessarily have systematically and grossly different preferences from young people throughout the wide range of issues at stakes in political competition (Rhodebeck 2009). Moreover, there are many, probably much more powerful factors than unequal participation – the threat of capital flight, campaign donations to political parties, and unequal descriptive representation of different social groups providing the probably simplest examples - that can generate unequal political representation. Mathematically speaking, it may be possible that the overall inequality of political representation is still reduced by citizen participation in spite of some inequality in the latter if it is still less unequally distributed among citizens than the chances that someone‟s preferences are promoted rather than hampered by those other factors influencing the acts of representatives and the nature of the representative process.

Thus I expect that participatory inequalities if existent in the first stage of the electoral process (mainly through voting, but also through other types of political activities – non-electoral participation) should account for a portion of variation in the inequalities in „overall representation‟. Figure 1 illustrates the basic analytical model. Main variables of interest, inequality in participation and new conceptualization of representation operationalized in three distinct types should be observed as system level factors, just like GINI coefficient or Human Development Index. However, since any analysis of inequality needs to focus on a baseline political relevant category (as age, ethnicity or education) it follows that these variables have to be calculated for each group separately. Moreover, as Przeworski and Teune (1970) rightfully argued many years ago, these factors should not be regarded as equal to institutional settings that can be observed at a system

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(country) level and to which all of the citizens are, at least potentially, exposed. Since they are attained by aggregating individual and relational properties I will refer to these variables as structural contexts and not institutional settings.

Figure 1 Basic analytical model

On an abstract level Figure 1 can be presented algebraically, in a linear form (where PR is overall political representation – that includes all three types of representation PR (PRpr-policy preference representation; PRir-interest representation; PRsp-symbolic procedural representation) PIe participatory inequality in electoral participation and PIne participatory inequality in non-electoral participation):

PRi = αi + β1PIei + β2PInei + β3Xi + ei Equation (1)

where the αi is a vector of country fixed effects, representing differences across countries which are not captured by the explanatory variables, βi are vectors of coefficients to be estimated from the data, β3 is the vector of control variables, and ei

iii is the unexplained variance on the dependent variable, which is assumed to follow a normal distribution and is set to have a zero mean.

From estimation of a relationship such as Equation (1), conclusions can be drawn about the impact of inequalities in electoral participation and in non-electoral participation. In addition, similar equations can be drawn for representation of preferences and representation of interest as two distinct empirical components of „overall representation‟ as illustrated in the Figure 1. Note however that the expectations and fuller model will be developed only for policy preference representation. Discussion on interest representation would require a separate paper. The linkages between proposed types of representation require additional theory and testing. It is quite possible to imagine that the consequences of inequality in policy representation in a country can be reduced by better interest representation. Analysis of these mechanisms requires developed measures of interest representation and information that we unfortunately still do not have for European countries.

There are of course issues of reverse causality that I will not discuss here in detail. The possibility of reverse causation between unequal political representation and unequal political participation certainly needs more attention. This is partly a question of exploring the theoretical plausibility of

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reciprocal linkages with respect to all hypotheses mentioned. But some further empirical analyses of situations where exogenous factors caused a change in either representational inequality or inequality in participation may be very informative. For instance, did women's (observed or presumed) preferences obtained arguably better representation in Swiss politics after the much belated enfranchisement of women in Switzerland? Were the increasing social inequalities of electoral participation that followed the abolition of compulsory voting in the Netherlands followed by an increase in inequalities of participation? Did the drop of participatory inequalities between Whites and African/Americans (or between Whites and Hispanics) in post-war America preceded or followed the emergence of a better representation of African-American (or Hispanic) concerns in Congress? Did the emergence of the Scottish Nationalist Party (or the German Greens) increased turnout among Scottish nationalists relative to the British average (whatever groups can be considered the natural constituency of the German Greens)?

A survey of such possible “natural experiments” (of course these are not experiments in the sense that they would control and possibly randomize exposure to stimuli among subjects), followed by a tightly reasoned sampling and subsequent empirical analysis of a few examples may give a possible test of the basic causal model offered in the paper and may also help making that model more realistic. For instance, it may well be the case that with a bit more thinking about the history of the labour and the women's movements one could identify conditions under which the causation is more likely to go in one direction rather than the other and vice versa. Then, the empirical analysis could focus on sampling the contexts where representational inequality is much more likely to be the mover than the moved, and asks how strong the relationship (in this direction) gets under these circumstances. Fortunately the scope of the empirical procedures is available to infer causal direction.iv

5. Expanding the model with contextual determinants: which institutions matter?

However, I am interested in observing and explaining cross-systemic differences of inequality patterns in representation and it is necessary to expand the research question by asking what other factors, not only inequality in participation, can account for a variation in unequal overall representation across countries. The theory of democratic policymaking proposes a simple view of the democratic policy-making process (Klingemann, Hofferbert and Budge 1994; Powell 2004). At the first stagev of the process citizens receive information through messages from educational institutions, mass media and political parties. They articulate their demands and structure their choices through political participation in the form of issue positions or ideological preferences. In the second stage, the preferences are ideally transferred to political parties who select and aggregate the demands received. This stage is called system of interest aggregation, and it is the crucial part of the democratic process. It also involves anticipating citizens‟ approval of policies and outcomes that they may not have formed preferences over, or at least not at the time of past elections. Third or final stage occurs within the system of government, where the main decision-making body initiates, creates and implements the policy output. The institutions that enter the process at these various stages can be considered as relevant factors for the emergence and amelioration of representational inequalities.vi Moreover, I will refer to them as institutional-settings factors (Przeworski and Teune 1970).

Figure 2 illustrates the stages of, what Powell (2004) calls, the chain of democratic responsiveness and respective facilitating conditions. First step would be to analyse the impact of participatory inequality on inequality in political representation within the stage of institutional aggregation of preferences. As a second stage of analysis, an additional empirical test should be conducted to see whether specific institutional settings (mass media, educational system and parties) can additionally

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account for the variation in participatory inequality and inequality in representation (structural contexts).

Figure 2 Full analytical model

Capital letters are showing different linkages in the hypothetical model. The expectations on the first relationship (A), between two types of participatory inequality (Pie and Pine) and policy preference representation (PRpr) were outlined before. However, unequal rates of participation of some groups are not the only explanatory variable. Various institutional arrangements should be taken into consideration when we are trying to explain a) why are the differences in probability to participate for selected groups different across countries; b) why is congruence between citizens and selected groups in the society higher or lower and observe c) does the linkage between unequal participation and unequal representation exist in real-existing democracies. Furthermore, difference should be made between institutions that influence both inequality in participation and inequality in representation at the stage when the choices are being structured and preferences formed (B and C) and at the stage when already structured choices become aggregated into political process (A, D and E). Final stage is evident in the illustration but requires a more developed model than I am able to offer here. As noted before, measuring interest representation and the analysis of facilitating conditions in the stage of policy making presents a specific challenge that requires special attention.

5.1 Structuring choices

As Powell (2004) points out, within this stage of democratic process citizens willingly or unconsciously receive information on the alternatives presented to them before election and they decide what their preferences, interest or positions are. They do so by using skills and knowledge attained during their education in a long-term process, or by gathering information dispersed and

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controlled by mass media or political parties in a somewhat shorter process. There are possibly many other factors that could be included in the analysis at this point, such as social networks, exposure to information over internet or just personal experience that influences these decisions. However understanding the process of preference formation and information diffusion patterns presents a complex analytical challenge that forces us to make subjective judgments on selecting the factors we wish to analyse and encourages us focus on one puzzle at the time. Moreover, all three institutional-setting factors are expected to have an effect on inequalities in electoral and non-electoral participation (connection B) and on the quality of preference representation (connection C).

Together with the party system, public communication outlets are main mobilizing agencies for political participation. It is expected here that more diversified public communication structures reduce the levels of both participatory distortion and inequality in preference representation for the under-represented groups. The differing characteristics of media systems can pose limitations in yielding complete information. Opinions could not have equal chances to become publicly articulated. Even if certain groups are found to be underrepresented in the active electorate, higher media diversity should compensate for the negative effects of inequality in participation on equal representation as a diverse media may be more likely to voice the perspectives and preferences of otherwise underrepresented groups. Therefore, it is logical to expect that: participatory distortion and inequality in representation should be lower in the systems where media diversity is higher than in the systems where this is not the case. Moreover, since diversified media system could act as more inclusive outlet in expressing diverse preferences of political elites it is reasonable to expect that citizens would be able to structure their choices more efficiently when they have access to more information.vii

However, the diversity of media systems should not be taken for granted. For instance, Curran et al. find that the public service model makes television news more accessible on leading channels and fosters higher levels of TV news consumption, and is also related to the decrease in the knowledge gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged and therefore contributes to a more egalitarian pattern of citizenship (Curran, Iyengar, Lund, and Salovaara-Moring 2009). Therefore, aside from the overall positive impact of the media diversity on the representativeness, I also speculate that participatory distortion and inequality in preference representation is lower in the systems where media ownership of broadcasting systems is public or dual, and where the strength of public-service orientation in the broadcasting systems is higher.

The equalizing effects of the system of education, at least to my knowledge, have not been analyzed as contextual factors contributing to equality in political participation and representation. Yet there is evidence that educational attainment and educational opportunities have a significant impact on the individual level propensity to participate in politics (Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995; Gallego 2007). Given these findings and the variation in the characteristics of educational systems across democratic countries it is reasonable to expect that that the educational systems with higher levels of equality will have a positive impact on the levels of participatory inequality, and secondly that the higher quality of educational systems will not necessarily lead to less participatory inequality.viii It is also expected that the certain trade-off between these two factors will be visible in the context of participatory and representational inequality.

The nature of representative agencies like the political parties and party system should have a direct influence on the both participatory inequality and on the representation of the under-represented group‟s preferences and interests. Dalton (1985) was among first authors who comparatively examined the impact of party organization and electoral systems on issue congruence between representatives and the represented, but the theories addressing this question obviously go back to at least Michels‟ (1915) law of oligarchy and the debate on them has an uninterrupted continuity in the works of party scholars up to the most recent debates about the transformation of contemporary

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parties (in some countries) into cartel parties (Katz and Mair 1995). Dalton found that the party structure hypothesis was supported more than the electoral structure hypothesis. However, he focused only on the degree of centralization in the decisions concerning the selection of parliamentary candidates as a central element of party systems.

Following the same logic, and given the particular focus of the this project, I will argue that the ability of parties to mobilize voters effectively and represent voters appropriately should be contingent upon a) stability of party competition; b) the programmatic differentiation between parties, or, in other words, the supply of political parties has to offer alternatives to enable voters to exercise their voice by retrospective evaluation or to provide them enough diversity in policy choices; and c) the choice of mobilization strategy. These characteristics can be brought into direct connection with our main objective, namely to analyze the impact of systemic characteristics on the level of participatory and representational inequality. Although these concepts are usually applied in analyses where parties are the units of analysis, here, for consistency with the way other hypotheses are to be examined, they will be assessed by country-level indices.

Following the first characteristic, stability of party competition, lower levels of participatory inequality and representational inequality are expected in the countries where party competition levels are more stable. As many authors pointed out before (see Powell‟s review 2004) stability of the party systems is necessary requirement for rational decision-making by citizens. Party stability should be operationalized here as both the degree of electoral volatility within blocks (Bartolini and Mair 1990) and as change in the number of actual electoral and parliamentary party organizations within a country (including dynamics of government-opposition relationships) as suggested by Bakke and Sitter (2005).

The programmatic differentiation between parties or the supply of political parties and the targets of political mobilization will be assessed because of the promising findings provided by the previous research on mobilization theory. In the ideal situation, this analysis would include the assessment of the supply side of political parties, specific targets of the mobilization and the type of mobilizational strategies.ix However, scarcity of resources on the political campaigns prevents me from testing this hypothesis in a large-N analysis. Thus, the supply side of the party system, mainly the degree of programmatic divergence between the parties (sometimes conceptualized as party system polarization) will be analyzed in the way suggested by Wessels (1999), who applied the same measures to test the hypothesis that the more divergent political supply conditions higher issue congruence between voters of a particular party and the MP‟s of that particular party. However, I expect that the divergence of party programs should not affect only the representational inequalities but should also have an impact on the equality in political participation.

Third characteristic of the party system, strategy of political mobilization will be assessed by evaluating the benefits that target particular groups in the populationx. It will be a more direct test of the mobilizational hypothesis. Not only am I testing the supply side, or programmatic differentiation of the parties but I also want to test the impact of targeted mobilization. It is possible that although not strongly polarized in a certain country, parties will decide to appeal to specific groups in the population and spread their „target base‟. Here the expectations are straight forward. The wider the overall appeal of the parties the lower the levels of participatory and representational inequalities are expected. And, if parties are mobilizing specific groups those groups are expected to be more active in political participation and in turn their preference and interest representation should be of higher quality (higher levels of congruence).

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5.2 Institutional aggregation

Second stage of the democratic process is concerned with the rules that enable conversion of citizen‟s preferences into electoral outcomes (distribution of seats in the parliament and government). However it has to be emphasised that institutional aggregation stage is not limited to elections and election outcomes. Citizens can raise their preferences in the periods between elections through various civil society outlets. This is why this analysis is not limited to analysing congruence between voters and representatives (or government) but it is interested in participation patterns and the quality of representation of specific groups in the entire society. Link A illustrated in the Figure 2 shows the first and basic assumption of this paper, that of the linkage between inequality in participation and quality of representation. This linkage is a part of the process of institutional aggregation. However, as with the first stage, we can expect that certain political institutions can act as mediators of the link between preferences of the citizens and preferences of the representatives and can help us explain different patterns of the degree of participatory inequality among real existing democracies.

The literature on comparative political institutions and the literature on the linkages between public opinion and policy (usually referred to as opinion-policy link) suggests one institution that is of particular importance in this process - electoral rules (Soroka and Wlezien 2010; Powell and Huber 1994; Powell 2004; Golder 2005).

Previous cross-country research on political representation analysed the impact of the selection of majoriarian or proportional visions of democracy and how do these types influence policy responsiveness (Soroka and Wlezien 2007). Lijphart (1999) argued that the performance of consensual systems versus majoritaran systems is superior on several outcome variables. Moreover Powell and Huber‟s analysis (1994) of congruence between incumbents/opposition and median voter suggested that in proportional systems governments are on average significantly closer to median voters. His explanation is simple, if there is a wider choice between alternatives and the results of the election are proportional there is closer correspondence between voters and partiesxi. On the other side, in Majoritarian Control systems we have only two alternatives which are distant from the median voter and the election results are naturally not proportional. However, Blais and Bodet (2006) compare respondents‟ self-placements on a left right scale with their perceptions of cabinet parties in 31 election studies and find that proportional representation has contradictory consequences. On one hand proportional representation leads to more parties which are less centrist and that increases the gap between them and median voters but on the other hand it does foster governments that have policies closer to the centre (given the coalition formation likelihood) and thus closer to median voter.

Previous research on inequality in political participation (such as Hill and Leighley 1992) suggests that the rates of participation should increase in those contexts where more groups in the society are targeted. If there is a larger number of political parties competing for power and a wider range of policy dimensions discussed there is a greater likelihood that more groups will be interested in participating. Also if there is a greater chance that everyone‟s preferences will be proportionally represented among the electoral outcomes we could expect higher motivation for participating among citizens. Since there is strong evidence that the number of parties increases with the proportionality of the electoral system we could expect lower unequal participation rates in the systems with proportional representation then in the systems with majoritarian arrangements.

All of the findings presented above, as nicely observed by Soroka and Wlezien (2007), pertain to elections and direct consequences of elections. They also argue that it may be that both proportional and majoritarian systems (conceived only as electoral rules or as two basic systems of government) work to serve representation but one works well in between elections (majoritarian) and the other

12

works well via elections (proportional) (Soroka and Wlezien 2004:6). However, as noted before, it is also expected that party stability and national coherence of options has an impact on inequalities in representation and participation. Given those factors, obviously linked to majoritarian systems and claims on better performance of majoritarian systems on policy responsiveness (Rogowski and Kayser (2001) in the periods between elections we could equally expect that majoritarian systems enhance quality of representation and equality in participation.

Both stories presented here provide convincing arguments. Consequences of the selection of majoritarian or proportional system seem to cancel each other when we are assessing them in the context of quality of representation. Thus, in the absence of more evidence, preliminary expectation can be stated now: both majoritarian and proportional representation should have an influence on inequality in representation and participation but the differences between them should be fairly small. Moreover, it could be more fruitful to analyse specific aspects of both systems, like the degree of party competition as suggested before (linkage 2 in Figure 2), then to focus on these two visions of democracies as more abstract concepts.

6. Introducing new measures: patterns of inequality in 27 European democracies

Thus far I have outlined the conceptualization of the main concept and stated expectations on the mechanisms that connect them in real-existing democracies. Generally speaking political participation and political representation combine to enhance the functioning of the democratic systems and political equality. In theory it is not hard to imagine that proposed concepts and proposed hypothesis should be easily tested. This section will move a step further and will propose measures of suggested concepts with examples in 27 European democracies.

As it was mentioned earlier this model aims to analyse the impact of democratic institutional mechanisms on equality in political participation and political representation as elements of substantive not baseline equality. Thus the common sense suggests that only countries that fall into the category of real-existing democracies should be selected for the analysis. Furthermore, the selection of real-existing or developed countries is the closest to the ideal of the selection of the homogenous cases which should be comparable across crucial dimensions. The ideal research would incorporate all real-existing democracies but this option is always restricted by the availability of the data necessary for the analysis. Furthermore, the selection of the cases that fall into the category of „real-existing democracies‟ or advanced industrial democracies is even harder when we consider the debate surrounding the conditions that country needs to satisfy if we were to classify it as a developed or developing. Thus by following the conventional wisdom this exploratory analysis will focus on 27 European democracies, which as members of the European Union can be considered as real existing democracies (all are considered to be free electoral democracies and have functioning market economies).

6.1 Inequality in participation – measuring Pie and Pine

The measure of participatory inequality – participatory distortion – is developed in the seminal study of Verba, Schlozman and Brady (1995). They define participatory distortion as „the circumstance in which political activists do not reflect accurately the larger population from which they come with respect to some politically relevant characteristic‟. (1995: 178). The consequences of distortion are disproportionate „voices‟ of groups that are more or less active.xii This paper follows their definition but introduces novel measure of inequality in participation. The measure I present here summarizes the expected differences in the probability to participate between various groups (such as low-educated and highly-educated) as an indicator of participatory inequality.

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At this point it is important to note that the selection of the politically relevant characteristics was here guided by the relative importance the category has in all European countries. For instance if I have selected race or religion I would probably find lower levels of inequality in countries where these characteristics are not pertinent to political conflict. On the other side, in some countries religion would be a highly politically relevant characteristic and we could expect higher levels of inequality of groups based on religion or race. Education and age, although not usually referred to as politically relevant characteristics, are selected for three basic reasons. Firstly, they travel well across countries, and we could say that the distribution in the population of these characteristics is similar across European countries. Secondly, age and education are both found to be significant predictors of political behaviour and significant differences in preferences are expected between young and old, or between those with high or low levels of education. And finally, since age and education do not seem to be characteristics on which a firm group identity would be formed (we rarely see highly educated forming non-governmental organizations and arguing for common interests), we can expect that if we find inequalities with these reference categories more inequalities are expected among groups that form on some „stronger‟ characteristic like language or religion.

To calculate the coefficient of electoral and non-electoral inequality for each target characteristic (age and education in this case) I will apply logistic regression at the individual level for each country separately. Binary dependent variable as a measure for the electoral participation (vote) and binary dependent variable as a measure for the non-electoral participation (in this case the most frequent activity – petitioning) is regressed on education and agexiii – each dichotomized to facilitate comparison. The comparison is conducted between lower and upper fifty percent of the citizens in both categories (age and education) which ensures that the results are not affected by the differences in the marginal distributions of the age and education and hence are more easily compared across countries and group-types. Given that the predictors such as gender or race are rarely found to be relevant predictors in the context of political participation in Europe (Norris 2002), while other variables such as income or occupation are highly correlated with education (which could bias the estimates of the effect of education on vote), basic model including only age and education (highly correlated but not a consequence of each other) is estimated:

Logit(votei)= β0 + β1 age_upij + β2 edu_upij + εij Equation (2)

Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6 show the results of the binary dependent variable – vote and petitioning regressed on binary independent variables age and education. Figures 3 and 4 contain logistic regression estimates and corresponding standard errors for 27 countries (in case of electoral participation) calculated from individual level data gathered by the European Parliament Election Surveyxiv. Figures 4 and 5 contain logistic regression estimates and corresponding standard errors for 20 countries (in case of non-electoral participation) calculated from individual level data gathered by the European Social Survey – Module 4xv.

***Figures 3 and 4 about here***

Age was coded 0 when lower half of the electorate is selected and 1 when the upper half of the electorate is selected. Same coding is applied to education. As mentioned before these measures enable us to detect the difference in probability to vote between two subgroups of age and education and to interpret logistic estimates easily. Note however that the coefficients for age and education do

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not imply that there is a causal relationship; I am merely interested in developing an index of participatory inequality for education and age. Thus, the logit is used only to detect the differences in the levels of participation between lower and upper halves of the educational and age groups. Each estimated coefficient is the change in the logodds of voting in the general elections for a unit increase in the corresponding predictor variables while other predictor variables are held at a certain value.

Results illustrated by the dotplot chart are logistic regression estimates for each country. Since the dependent variable is firstly converted into an odds ratioxvi, results are bounded between 0 an 1. Secondly, the logistic transformation removes these limits and allows the values to range from infinity to negative infinity. This is why the results of the logistic regression are not directly interpretable but nothing prevents us to those estimates as a direct measure of the dependent variable without transforming it into odds. However if we wanted to interpret the results shown in the dotplots now we would use the inverse link functionxvii to convert the values of log odds into odds.

For instance in Belgium (Figure 3), holding education at a fixed value and after transforming the log odds into odds (by taking the exponent or the logistic regression coefficient), the odds of voting for upper age half of the electorate are 2.92 times higher than the odds of voting for the lower age half of the electorate. Also these figures show that on average upper halves of both age and education groups are more likely to vote than the lower halves. In an ideal situation all dots would be arranged closer to 0 (represented by the dotted vertical line) and the levels of inequality in participation would be lower – odds that the lower age halves participate in elections would be the same as the odds of upper age halves. In addition, these findings indicate that different patterns of inequality exist in European countries and that we should ask ourselves what factors are contributing to these differences.

***Figures 5 and 6 about here***

Figures 5 and 6, as said before are calculated from European Social Survey – Module 4. Since I have tried to capture the inequality in non-electoral participation in about the same time as electoral participation, case selection was limited to 20 European countries available in the datasets. A full analysis of all forms of non-electoral participation (contacting a politician, boycotting or working for a political party or organization) would be necessary to see the patterns of inequality in non-electoral participation. However, sample sizes for those types of participation are usually very small and analysis would have to include a regression of rare event data. To simplify this exploration I have used the most frequent form of non-electoral participation (on average in all countries analyzed) and have calculated the logistic estimates only for petitioning.

As figures 5 and 6 indicate, patterns of non-electoral participation are quite different than odds of participating in election. Surprisingly the differences between age and educational groups are much higher when we consider petitioning. We can see that in all of the countries those who belong to the lower halves of the educational category have higher chances to sign a petition than those who belong to the upper halves of the educational groups. Figure 5 shows that inequality patterns of petitioning are similar to the patterns of voting when we take both age and education as reference categories. These findings show that it does matter which category is taken as a point of estimation of non-electoral or electoral inequality and moreover that it does make sense to take both types of participation into consideration as predictors of inequality in preference representation.

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6.2 Measuring policy preference representation - PRpr

As mentioned before, policy preference representation (closest to “promissory representation” in Mainshridge‟s terminology) is just one component of overall representation. However, some empirical analysts attribute central normative and practical importance to it among representational linkages (Wessels 1999), and it also has far better developed measures in the empirically oriented literature than, say, interest representation (closest to “anticipatory representation” for Mainsbridge) or what Pitkin (1967) and the subsequent literature calls “symbolic representation” (often distinguishing “descriptive representation” as a particularly interesting aspect of it, especially in studies of race and gender issues in representation). Therefore this paper will focus only on policy preference representation (i.e. the degree of preference agreement between specific groups of citizens and their representatives) to explore the patterns of inequality. The preferences of “representatives” are usually calculated from expert surveys on party position, or analyses of party manifestos, or surveys with parliamentarians, party elites, or candidates for election. These are then compared with citizen survey data on preferences among citizensxviii recorded on the same, or functionally equivalent questionnaire items (as in Holmberg 1999 or Pierce 1999 study among many others).

As in the previous analysis, this measure relies on the 2009 European Parliament Election Study- Voter Survey (EES 2009) that covers 27 EU Member States with a total sample size of 19504 observations on the individual level. Additionally, the paper uses the European Election Candidate Study dataset (EESC 2009xix) with a survey in 27 EU Member States with a total sample size of 1574 observations on the individual level (interviews are conducted with the candidates for the European Parliament). Voter Survey and Candidate Survey Study both contain identical questions on various policy positions which enables me to calculate the indices of representational inequalities for policy representation (PRpr) without resorting to rescaling of the original variables for each country as in previous studies (see Miller 1999). For this example I have selected 4 policy issues: i1) Immigrants should be required to adapt to the customs of [COUNTRY], i2) Private enterprise is the best way to solve [COUNTRY'S] economic problems, i3) Same-sex marriages should be prohibited by law and i4) Major public services and industries ought to be in state ownership.

To calculate the indices of representational inequalities for age and educational groups, I have simply taken the average difference between the positions of specific groups (educational and age) and the mean position of the candidates together. This has allowed me to calculate simple measures of the extent to which the preferences of older and more educated halves of the electorate are closer to the mean legislator than the preferences of the younger, less educated halves of the electorate for each of the target characteristics (age and education)xx and for each of the policy questions analysed. To express the differences across policy questions I have also calculated coefficients of inequality in representation which will be used in the further analysis as a summary measure of inequality in policy preference representation.

*** Table 1 about here***

Table 1 provides a snapshot of patterns of policy representation (PRpr) in 27 European countries. The analysis was conducted on 4 policy questions (outlined below the table) with a scale from 1-5 (strongly agree-strongly disagree) both from the Voter Survey and Candidate Survey. For each country, average issue position was calculated for lower age and upper age halves of the sample and for lower educational and upper educational halves of the sample. Table 1 shows the average differences across all 4 issues between each group and the candidate means (difference between the

16

group and the candidate divided by the number of issues analyzed). It should be noted here that average candidate position refers to the country candidates for the European Parliament and I do not assume that that figure closely resembles the average position of the country parliamentarians. These figures are just an illustration of the process of measurement of the inequality in representation and any further analysis should try to incorporate information on the positions of representatives in country parliaments.

To assess the degree to which the preferences of the upper halves of the electorate are closer to the mean candidate on every issue, a sum of the differences between the average of preferences of lower halves and mean candidates and the differences between the average position of the upper halves and the mean candidate was calculatedxxi. Moreover, the PRpr for age and PRpr for education represent the summary measure of the sums of differences between the positions of both halves and the candidates divided by the number of issues. PRpr was calculated for both categories of interest. Table 1 presents country differences on all 4 issues for both target categories. The measure for each issue separately can vary between 0.0 (perfect equality in representation) to 4.0 (maximum difference), same is for the PRpr summary measures.

The results indicate that differences in inequality in policy representation clearly exist across European democracies. The difference between average opinion of the lower halves (both age and education) and candidates and upper halves and candidates are highest in Hungary and lowest in Greece. Moreover, it is interesting to notice that the estimates for age and educational groups do not differ much. Patterns are almost the same. Also the inequality on some issues is higher than on the others. Figures 6 and 7 illustrate the same findings in a more visually appealing manner. Here we can see in which country the inequality patterns are highest or lowest and what issues are the most diverse across European countries. Obviously, all these quantities are estimated with some sampling error that the macro-level analysis should take into account.xxii

***Figures 6 and 7 about here***

6.3 Note on interest and overall representation

As emphasized before, interest representation is understood as a second component of substantive representation. It is manifested as the congruence between the interest of the citizens and specific policy outputs. The analyses on policy outputs have mostly been applied on single case studies or on a very small number of countries. Roll-call voting analysis requires extensive information on the numerous vote choices in the parliament, the analysis of the congruence of the positions of citizens and the content of the decisions made by the government requires assessment of the clear beneficiaries of a certain policy which is sometimes quite controversial. And finally the analysis of the final policy outcome, even if we can agree on the criteria for the 'good' or 'bad' policies, has a serious methodological problem. It is problematic to trace the origins of certain policies, are they the consequence of immediate political decision or a relic of an old governmental strategies. A detailed process tracing analysis would be a proper solution to analyze this aspect of the representative process, something that cannot be easily achieved for the purposes of a large cross-country analysis. However, although the measures of interest representation are not perfect at this point, the continuous effort will be made to include this aspect of the representation process in the empirical analysis. For instance, previous Manifesto Research Group studies successfully addressed the impacts of parties‟ programs on government declarations (for instance see Hofferbert and Klingemann 1990). The relationship between party programs, governments, and policy outputs was also analysed in terms of the congruence between programs and governments‟ budget

17

allocations in ten countries (Klingemann, Hofferbert and Budge 1994). It is possible to follow this line of research and focus on budget allocations as policy outputs. Overall representation is introduced as an overall concept that can capture all aspects of representation to the extent that an individual citizen cares about them. However, this measure is not a novelty; for instance, Wattenberg (2000) uses the individual reported voter satisfaction with political parties to look for signs that parties fulfil their function of preference aggregation. His analysis, conducted on first two elections in the 1950‟s and the two most recent ones (in the 1990‟s) on nineteen industrialized countries, is concluded with the general impression that political parties have „fallen upon hard times‟ (Lawson and Poguntke 2004). Similar research is later on conducted by Dalton and Wattenberg (2000) to test the disillusionment hypothesis internationally. Namely, measured by the individual level reported satisfaction with the government (such as item on „Satisfaction with government/president: general' in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems) and with the reported feeling of 'representation' (such as item on 'How well are your opinions represented?' in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems) this measure of representation covers all types of representation and it gives that much weight to the problems of representation as people actually care about. Furthermore, it can be understood as a retrospective (evaluation of previous decisions) evaluation of the government performance.xxiii

7 Instead of conclusion: way forward

The focus of the paper lies on inequality among different politically relevant groups. Contrary to mainstream literature on both political participation and political representation, this paper proposes an agenda to analyze the impact of various applied forms of democratic mechanisms on equality patterns among different groups, not on median voters. Naturally, the selection of focus groups and relevant characteristics that we use to delimit them will influence different results. However, one should focus on analyzing groups based on characteristics that are found to be salient within and across real-existing democracies. This strategy is not the best one, but it is necessary if we want to make comparative conclusions that stand the tests of methodological rigor. Although only age and education were taken as examples for measuring participatory and representatorial inequality, examples in the literature can be found where other characteristics were taken as baseline categories (such as gender or the degree of political information).

A relationship between inequalities in participation and inequalities in representation was taken as a relationship between system level structural contexts. Indices proposed in the paper are taken as country level indicators since I am also interested in analyzing the impact of other institutional settings on both participation and representation. Media system diversity, educational system quality and equality, party competition and the selection of electoral rules were suggested as institutions that should be considered in the final analytical framework.

Finally, this paper did not aim to provide a final test of the suggested relationship but only an outline of the research design (with the detailed elaboration on both the theory and proposed measurement of the concepts). Since both indices of inequality in participation and inequality in representation are envisaged as survey estimates based on individual level data it is necessary to acknowledge that they do come with significant estimation uncertainty. One way in approaching the problem and incorporating both uncertainties associated with the predictors and the outcome variable, would be to conduct a two-stage regression. A more advanced approach would contain a multilevel model where logit estimates for inequality in participation would be calculated for each individual as predicted probabilities to participate. Inequality in representation could be calculated for each individual separately as a difference between his position and the average position of

18

parliamentarians taken together. This would enable us to use inequality in representation as an individual level dependent variable and all other institutional setting variables as second level predictors. Moreover, a final empirical test should be conducted by using information on the position of the parliamentarians (for calculating inequality in policy representation) and not by using the positions of the candidates for the European parliament as it has been done here. Hopefully, incorporation of all existing datasets that contain both mass and elite level information will enable me to conduct the proposed analysis in the near future.

The central concern of this paper was the role of inequality in political participation in enhancing or ameliorating inequality in political representation. The importance of these concepts should be viewed in terms of the achievement of more or less political equality. Democracy cannot function without a certain degree of citizen involvement. This statement should hold true whatever definition of democracy we choose to follow and it is not unusual that the certain areas of the study of political science have early on been dedicated to the research on political participation. However, the arguments presented here are neither advocating the vision of democracy as self-governing associations in which collective decisions are made by all citizens (Warren 2002), nor the vision of bare electoral democracy. Political equality was here normatively and very generally understood as an equal opportunity of every individual that can potentially be affected by a decision to influence the decision in question. Moreover it is understood as a substantive request on the existing democratic process. In analyzing the quality of real-existing democracies it is not enough to recognize the existence of de jure procedural rights to equal participation and representation, it is also relevant to see whether these principles de facto exist.

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NOTES:

i While formalistic representation refers merely to the institutional position of the representative, descriptive representation is by Pitkin described as „correspondence or likeness and the importance of resembling one's constituents‟ (1967:111). Symbolic representation 'suggests the role of irrational belief, which is neglected by the formalistic view, and the importance of pleasing one's constituents‟ (1967:100). Moreover, acting for representation is understood as „representing without any formalities-without the exercise of another‟s rights or the ascription of normative consequences, without an „official‟ represented.‟ (1967:142).

ii Political participation will here refer to „the activity that has the intent of influencing government action, either directly by affecting the making or implementation of public policy or indirectly by influencing the selection of people who make those policies‟ (Schlozman 2002:434).

iii As for the residual, or other explanatory variables, they can vary from domestic explanations such as the level of corruption, bias in descriptive representation, pressure of lobby or interest groups, redistribution of private benefits of the individual MP‟s, media, influence from other non-institutionalized actors in the society, to external factors, such as the influence of international organizations, global economic environment and finally to the influence that can be attributed to nature only.

iv Among many solutions I will review the work of Granger and the possibility of cross-path structural equation models as means to assess causal direction.

v Note that the three stages – structuring choices, institutional aggregation and policy making are three linkages of the democratic responsiveness chain suggested by Powell (2004).

vi Other, wider systemic characteristics such as the level of social or economic inequality, social homogeneity, redistributive policies or the organization of the labour market should also be taken into consideration during the planned analysis but at this point my interest lies only in the institutional constrains generated by basic democratic institutional frameworks. vii Voltimer (2010) indicators will be used to test the hypothesis on the influence of the ownership structure of the broadcasting system (private, public or dual) and indicators developed by Popescu, Gosselin and Santana (2010) will be used to test the hypothesis on the impact of overall media diversity. viii Since the literature on educational systems usually distinguishes between equality and quality (effectiveness) of education (Horn 2009; Pfeffer 2008) I will use indicators to capture both aspects of the educational system characteristics. Equality will be understood as equality of opportunity in education and it can be defined as the „extent that students‟ socioeconomic background determines the students‟ adjusted scores. The higher the association between the student background and the students‟ score the more unequal the system is.‟ (Horn, 2009: 23). Quality will be understood as the basic performance of the educational system and it will be defined as the ability of adults to “use printed and written material to function in society” (Pfeffer 2008).

ix Type of mobilizational strategies analyzed by Verba, Nie and Kim (1978) can be distinguished into individual based mobilization and group-based mobilization. Their research has showed that the group-based mobilization (targeting specific ethnic or racial groups during the electoral campaigns) has a significant impact on lower-class and minority mobilization. x Second characteristic of the party system, the degree of programmatic differentiation will be assessed by using the indicators developed by Wessels (1999). Mainly by measuring the party system polarization (range between two most extreme positions on the right and on the left). And finally, the third characteristic of the party system, strategy of political mobilization will be assessed by evaluating the benefits that target particular groups in the population. Based on the battery of expert survey questions from the Kitchelt, Freeze, Kolev and Wang (2009) a country index of benefits targeted to individual citizens and small groups will be created from these variables: a. group member targeting: rural, urban, ethnic party b. group member targeting: poor-middle-wealthy c. parties‟ transmission belts to deliver targeted goods: unions, business associations; religious groups; ethnic

groups; urban or rural; women

xi Note however that Powell and Huber‟s (1994) conceptualization of the systems of government is based on the consequences of different electoral rules but does not include electoral rules as separate indicator for classifying countries. On the other hand Blais and Bodet (2006) focus only on proportional and majoritarian representation as electoral family types and classify countries accordingly

20

xii In 1995, Verba, Schlozman and Brady introduced several measures of such distortions. The simplest measure is measure of difference. Difference measure of participatory distortion (Dc=E(C|a) – E(C)) for any characteristic „is very appealing because it directly compares the average characteristics communicated to the decision makers by activists [E(CIa)] with the average characteristic in the population [E(C)].‟ (1995: 573). The second measure is the representation ratio, first developed by Rosenstone and Hansen (1993), and later adopted and modified by Verba, Schlozman and Brady (1995). Representation ratio is calculated by comparing „the group‟s share of the participants to its share of the population as a whole: RATIOi = PARTi / POPi‟ (291).

xiv 2009 European Parliament Election Study - Voter Survey (EES 2009), (www.piredeu.eu) xv European Social Survey Module 4 (ESS4-2008 Edition 3.0), released on 24 March 2010. xvi A probability that an event (here voting and signing petition) happens versus the probability that it does not.

xvii )10

(1

)110

(

e

Xe

Y

xviii Earlier studies mostly rely on the left-right self-placement of the electorate and the party manifestos, this analysis will focus preliminary on preference positions. Although further analysis might include left-right self placement or „ideology‟ to calculate the inequality in representation, policy preference calculations from several available questions in the EES 2009 dataset should provide me good preliminary measures.

xix EES (2009), European Parliament Election Study 2009, Candidate Study, Advance Release, July/2010, (www.piredeu.eu)

xx Detailed descriptions of the variables, coding and their values for each country are presented in Appendix 1.

xxi The sum was used to describe the total difference in opinion between both groups and the candidates, thus the results were calculated using absolute values. xxii By using a simex error-correction model (see http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/simex/simex.pdf) or Rubin's rules for averaging across multiple (uncertain) estimates for the same quantity. xxiii However, since I also want to analyse the relationship between participatory distortion and 'overall participation' the problem of endogeneity arises. Mainly, it can be expected that individual assessments of government performance will influence the lower levels of participation that can in turn influence unsatisfactory policy outcomes. This issue could be addressed by analysing the impact of the difference of participatory inequalities between two groups, such as those with low income who participate compared to those with high income who participate, on the satisfaction difference.

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APPENDIX 1 – Figures and tables

Figure 3 and 4 Logistic regression estimates. Inequality in voting between upper and lower age and

education groups in 27 European democracies

-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4

ROBGUKSEFI

SKSI

PTPLATNLMTHULULTLVCYITIE

FRESELEEDEDKCZBE

-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4

ROBGUKSEFI

SKSI

PTPLATNLMTHULULTLVCYITIE

FRESELEEDEDKCZBE

Figure 5 and 6 Logistic regression estimates. Inequality in petitioning between upper and lower age

and education groups in 20 European democracies

-2 -1 0 1 2

RO

UK

SE

FI

SK

SI

PT

PL

NL

HU

LV

CY

FR

ES

EL

EE

DE

DK

CZ

BG

-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3

RO

UK

SE

FI

SK

SI

PT

PL

NL

HU

LV

CY

FR

ES

EL

EE

DE

DK

CZ

BG

25

Table 1 Average issue congruence (on domestic policies) between different age and educational groups and candidates for the European Parliament in 27 member countries.

i1 i2 i3 i4 i1 i2 i3 i4

Country BE 0.96 0.21 1.54 0.60 0.83 0.96 0.27 1.51 0.51 0.81

CZ 1.00 0.71 0.32 1.50 0.88 0.93 0.71 0.28 1.49 0.85

DK 0.83 0.08 0.88 0.40 0.55 0.83 0.39 0.87 0.38 0.62

DE 1.58 0.48 1.11 0.58 0.94 1.60 0.20 1.13 0.58 0.88

EE 0.22 0.27 1.64 2.48 1.15 0.20 0.27 1.62 2.49 1.14

EL 0.77 0.37 0.71 0.80 0.66 0.73 0.47 0.70 0.83 0.68

ES 0.62 1.21 0.31 0.05 0.55 0.65 1.22 0.22 0.12 0.55

FR 1.16 1.82 0.50 0.52 1.00 1.15 1.78 0.45 0.49 0.96

IE 1.35 0.26 0.23 0.26 0.52 1.33 0.22 0.34 0.26 0.54

IT 1.53 0.38 0.87 0.46 0.81 1.63 0.50 1.00 0.62 0.94

CY 1.20 0.61 1.86 1.39 1.27 1.11 0.76 1.73 1.51 1.28

LV 0.46 0.69 2.29 1.70 1.29 0.24 0.68 2.28 1.69 1.22

LT 0.25 0.84 2.07 2.40 1.39 0.05 0.86 2.06 2.40 1.34

LU 2.26 0.36 1.10 0.94 1.16 2.17 0.44 1.00 0.91 1.13

HU 1.44 0.59 2.86 3.87 2.19 1.40 0.60 2.71 3.81 2.13

MT 0.64 0.29 1.17 1.95 1.01 0.60 0.10 1.10 2.03 0.96

NL 0.81 0.34 0.83 0.80 0.70 0.83 0.03 0.81 0.77 0.61

AT 1.73 0.40 1.01 0.41 0.89 1.47 0.27 0.82 0.38 0.74

PL 0.53 0.16 2.72 2.57 1.49 0.49 0.18 2.54 2.44 1.42

PT 1.11 0.43 1.18 1.61 1.08 1.10 0.41 1.15 1.60 1.06

SI 1.19 0.45 2.21 1.71 1.39 1.07 0.43 2.09 1.61 1.30

SK 0.28 0.96 1.84 2.28 1.34 0.22 0.79 1.66 2.09 1.19

FI 1.26 0.37 1.30 1.72 1.16 1.23 0.36 1.25 1.72 1.14

SE 0.89 0.27 0.45 2.66 1.07 0.80 0.27 0.35 2.64 1.01

UK 1.11 1.33 0.75 0.65 0.96 1.06 1.39 0.68 0.63 0.94

BG 0.73 0.89 3.01 2.80 1.86 0.70 0.83 2.85 2.55 1.73

RO 1.59 0.61 1.66 2.60 1.62 1.69 0.72 1.81 2.73 1.74

i1 = Immigrants should be required to adapt to the customs of [COUNTRY]

i2 = Private enterprise is the best way to solve [COUNTRY'S] economic problems

i3 = Same-sex marriages should be prohibited by law

i4 = Major public services and industries ought to be in state ownership

PRpr for age PRpr for education

Sum ((lower age group position

average - candidate position

average);(upper age group

position average - candidate

position average))

Sum ((lower education group

position average - candidate

position average);(upper

education group position

average - candidate position

average))

26

Figure 7 Average issue congruence (on domestic policies) between different age groups and candidates for the European Parliament in 27 member countries

Figure 8 Average issue congruence (on domestic policies) between different educational groups and candidates for the European Parliament in 27 member countries