Popular perceptions of participatory inequalities

The principle of political equality expresses a moral judgment where the good of every human being ought to be regarded as intrinsically equal to the good of anybody else, which implies that government should give equal consideration to the good and interests of every person (Dahl, Reference Dahl1998).

One of the essential merits of democracy is its intrinsic capacity of yielding more legitimate decisions by giving citizens equal voice in the decision-making process (Dahl, Reference Dahl1989). This principle is in existing democracies enshrined in the one person, one vote principle. Nevertheless, this formal equality does not necessarily entail that all citizens also take advantage of this right in equal terms. Several studies show persistent inequalities in political participation in elections and between elections (Verba et al., Reference Verba, Schlozman and Brady1995; Armingeon and Schädel, Reference Armingeon and Schädel2015; Dalton, Reference Dalton2017). Verba et al. (Reference Verba, Schlozman and Brady1995) find that these participatory inequalities have their roots in differences in individual resources, psychological engagement and networks. Dalton (Reference Dalton2017) contends that the expansion of participation in old and new forms creates a widening participation gap, and that education plays a key role in explaining this gap. When it comes to elections, education attainment is also considered a main driver for the participatory gap between social groups that has widened over the past decades (Armingeon and Schädel, Reference Armingeon and Schädel2015).

Groups with more resources, be they intellectual, economic or organizational, are not only likely to be more active, they are also more likely to be heard by decision-makers (Gilens, Reference Gilens2005). Empirically, it has also been found that inequalities hamper the proper functioning of democracy (Andersen and Fetner, Reference Andersen and Fetner2008; Anderson and Singer, Reference Anderson and Singer2008; Solt, Reference Solt2008). This is worrisome from a normative perspective, since it hampers democratic inclusiveness (Young, Reference Young2000). Furthermore, descriptive representation promotes decision acceptability and legitimacy of policy outcomes since people are more willing to accept a decision when it is made by a group of people that resemble themselves (Arnesen and Peters, Reference Arnesen and Peters2018).

Considering the emphasis on participatory inequality in existing literature, it is somewhat surprising that few studies have examined attitudes toward such inequalities. One of the early survey-based studies to do so was Prothro & Grigg (Reference Prothro and Grigg1960), who found overwhelming support among Americans for the proposition that all citizens should have an equal chance to influence government policy. Later studies on how people evaluate democracy focus on formal forms of equality before the law and social and economic equality (Ferrín and Kriesi, 2016). This may be because it is taken for granted that the public supports an equal voice for all citizens (Howarth et al., Reference Howarth, Marteau, Coutts, Huppert and Pintoe2019: 200). It can also be problematic to examine this with traditional survey items since respondents tend to rate all elements of democracy highly when asked directly (Ferrín and Kriesi, Reference Ferrín and Kriesi2016). To some extent, all democratic ideals are important. But this result might also be due to social desirability bias, which concerns the tendency of individuals to give answers that are perceived as more favorable (Nederhof, Reference Nederhof1985; Krumpal, Reference Krumpal2013). It can be perceived as sensitive to disregard an established democratic ideal when the respondent is aware that this is considered important by others.

It may, therefore, be beneficial to use more subtle techniques when asking people to reveal their preferences for participatory equality.

However, a more substantial reason can also explain why people should not consider participatory equality to be important for a functioning democracy. Studies show support for a stealth model of democracy across several countries, which entails that ordinary citizens should not necessarily be involved in political matters on a regular basis (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, Reference Hibbing and Theiss-Morse2002; Bengtsson and Mattila, Reference Bengtsson and Mattila2009; VanderMolen, Reference VanderMolen2017; Fernández-Martínez and Font, Reference Fernández-Martínez and Font2018). This point of view entails that instead of popular involvement, elected elites and/or experts should make the important decisions. Involvement for ordinary citizens should be reserved to extraordinary circumstances when the system clearly no longer contributes to the benefit of all. Crucially, studies show that these ideals also have consequences for how active citizens are in political participation (Bengtsson and Christensen, Reference Bengtsson and Christensen2016; Gherghina and Geissel, Reference Gherghina and Geissel2017). Consequently, people supporting stealth democracy are also likely to consider participatory inequalities to be less of a concern from a democratic perspective. Since widespread participation is not necessarily considered beneficial, it is necessary to examine whether people consider participatory equality important for democracy. This leads us to our first hypothesis:

We examine this proposition in our first study with the help of both explicit questions and a list experiment to investigate whether results are affected by social desirability bias.

Participatory inequalities and implications for legitimacy

Even when people believe that participatory inequalities matter for democracy, the implications for the legitimacy of decision-making depend on several factors. For example, the inclusion of women in participatory processes is likely to be more important to women since it boosts their descriptive representation in the processes (Pitkin, Reference Pitkin1972; Clayton et al., Reference Clayton, O’Brien and Piscopo2019). We examine how over- or underrepresenting certain groups affect the legitimacy of the outcomes of participatory processes, and the extent to which these effects are contingent on the nature of the issue and the type of participatory process. In the following, we propose several hypotheses that are examined in Study 2.

First, it is important to recognize that different kinds of participatory inequality may have entirely different implications for legitimacy. The inclusion of representatives from historically underrepresented groups help legitimize political decisions (Clayton et al., Reference Clayton, O’Brien and Piscopo2019). But there are many different potential groups, and all do not play an equally important role in enhancing legitimacy. We here focus on two different forms of inequality: gender inequalities and inequalities in educational attainment. While the list of potential inequalities to include is virtually endless, these have received considerable attention in the literature on participatory inequalities and are widely recognized as individual-level factors that affect political participation.

A wide array of studies on gender inequalities in different forms of political participation provide evidence of consistent evidence of gender differences in participation (Schlozman et l., Reference Schlozman, Burns and Verba1994; Karpowitz et al., Reference Karpowitz, Mendelberg and Shaker2012; Bolzendahl and Coffé, Reference Bolzendahl and Coffé2013). Schlozman et al. (Reference Schlozman, Burns and Verba1994) show that men are more active in traditional political activities. Bolzendahl and Coffé (Reference Bolzendahl and Coffé2013) also find that men are more active in traditional political activities, but that women are more active in individualized activities such as signing petitions or political consumerism. A similar pattern exists when examining participation among younger citizens (Grasso and Smith, Reference Grasso and Smith2022), as young women are more active in petitioning and boycotting, whereas young men are more active in political parties and organizations. Gender differences have also been found in participatory processes such as deliberative mini-publics (Karpowitz et al., Reference Karpowitz, Mendelberg and Shaker2012). A study suggests that women are more willing to deliberate, but their efforts are undermined by men’s negative deliberative behaviors (Afsahi, Reference Afsahi2022). The impact of participation may be gendered too, since Beauvais (Reference Beauvais2020) finds that people are more willing to revise their opinions after hearing a man’s counterargument than after hearing an identical counterargument from a woman. While gender differences in participation are today less pronounced than previously (Burns, Reference Burns2007; Coffé and Bolzendahl, Reference Coffé and Bolzendahl2010), it is a cleavage that cuts across other areas of stratification, which makes it salient for all citizens (Coffé and Bolzendahl, Reference Coffé and Bolzendahl2010: 318).

Gender inequalities are also important due to descriptive representation (Rosenthal, Reference Rosenthal1995; Atkeson and Carrillo, Reference Atkeson and Carrillo2007; Clayton et al., Reference Clayton, O’Brien and Piscopo2019). Several factors such as age, party identification, and gender stereotypes help explain attitudes toward women’s descriptive representation (Sanbonmatsu, Reference Sanbonmatsu2003; Dolan and Sanbonmatsu, Reference Dolan and Sanbonmatsu2009; Dolan, Reference Dolan2010). A recent study contends that concerns with the adequate representation of women’s interests explain women’s support for gender equality, whereas this has no effect among men (Espírito-Santo, Reference Espírito-Santo2016). According to Clayton et al. (Reference Clayton, O’Brien and Piscopo2019), gender inequalities in participatory processes suppress the legitimacy of decision-making in the USA across issues and policy outcomes. Women’s presence contributes to higher procedural legitimacy when the issue under discussion is unrelated to gender or even if decisions go against women’s interests, whereas levels of procedural fairness, institutional trust, and acquiescence are lower if all-male panels advance feminist policies. All of this shows that the inclusion of women matters for perceptions of decision-making legitimacy.

Education is usually seen as arguably the strongest predictor of political participation, since those with more education are more likely to be politically active (Verba et al., Reference Verba, Schlozman and Brady1995; Dalton, Reference Dalton2017; Mayne and Peters, Reference Mayne and Peters2022). Education can boost participation by helping to develop pertinent skills for participation and provide concrete information on how society and politics function (Verba et al., Reference Verba, Schlozman and Brady1995). Furthermore, educational attainment cuts across other cleavages, such as income, and children born to affluent and well-educated parents are, for instance, known to be more likely to become well-educated and affluent themselves (Bowles et al., Reference Bowles, Gintis and Groves2005). Although Finland is a country with strong educational equity on the basic level, there has been substantial differences in turnout depending on level of education, especially among the young age groups (Lahtinen, Reference Lahtinen2019), showing that educational inequalities have real consequences for political engagement, even in Finland.

Since educational attainment remains a strong source of participatory inequality in contemporary democracies, it is important to examine whether this also has a detrimental effect on democratic legitimacy. Here it is interesting to note that a recent study suggests that education-based differences are relatively unimportant for perceptions of legitimacy (Mayne and Peters, Reference Mayne and Peters2022). On the other hand, the increased emphasis on education as the key to success in society has been questioned (Sandel, Reference Sandel2021). Furthermore, education has become a key explanation for a contemporary cleavage between the winners and losers of globalization (Stubager, Reference Stubager2010; Kriesi et al., Reference Kriesi, Grande, Dolezal, Helbling, Hutter and Wüest2012). Hence, there is reason to believe that educational inequalities may affect legitimacy.

Based on this, we propose the following two hypotheses:

We here use overrepresented to indicate that men/well-educated are represented in greater numbers than in the general population.

Legitimacy is also a multidimensional concept with different meanings that is difficult to measure unequivocally (Weatherford, Reference Weatherford1992; Gilley, Reference Gilley2006; Tyler et al., Reference Tyler, Feldman and Rasinski2006; Arnesen and Peters, Reference Arnesen and Peters2018). Our focus in the previous set of hypotheses is on how inequalities affect citizens’ perceptions of input legitimacy of participatory processes. There are, however, studies that suggest that people care more about output legitimacy, or the extent to which decisions correspond to citizens’ policy preferences (Scharpf, Reference Scharpf1999; Schmidt, Reference Schmidt2013; Esaiasson et al., Reference Esaiasson, Gilljam and Persson2017). We here refer to this as the usefulness of the advice since we do not study the impact of the policies in question. Output legitimacy conflicts with input legitimacy since people may be willing to accept participatory inequalities when it is believed that those who are overrepresented can assure better policy outcomes. Since education can help develop civic skills and make participants better moral reasoners, increasing the proportion of participants with low education can lower the quality of participation, hence making outcomes less useful (Verba, Reference Verba2003: 669). When people were to believe this to be true, they may well accept that the well-educated form the majority since it can make the participatory input more useful for decision-makers. While gender does not confer similar advantages, people use certain cues to infer traits or policy positions about representatives (Carnes and Sadin, Reference Carnes and Sadin2015; Arnesen et al., Reference Arnesen, Duell and Johannesson2019; Däubler et al., Reference Däubler, Quoß and Rudolph2021). Since men have historically held more civic resources than women (Burns, Reference Burns2007), people might, even subconsciously, still believe that men are also more apt at political decision-making (Rashotte and Webster, Reference Rashotte and Webster2005; Dolan, Reference Dolan2010). Such perceptions can endure even in a relatively gender-equal society such as Finland, where only 44% of men and 52% of women find both genders equally apt in all policy areas (Nieminen and Attila, Reference Nieminen, Attila and Attila2018). We therefore propose the following two hypotheses regarding the usefulness of participation when advantaged groups are overrepresented:

Two more aspects are worth considering for the present purposes: the form of participatory process and the issue consequences, since both are likely to moderate how participatory inequalities affect perceived legitimacy and usefulness.

Although much research on equality is focused on elections and parliaments, there is also a need to scrutinize equality in participatory processes that give citizens a voice between elections. As noted by Clayton et al. (Reference Clayton, O’Brien and Piscopo2019: 128–129), who in their study focus exclusively on deliberative bodies, the nature of citizen involvement and decision-making rules are likely to affect the results. Various forms of participatory processes exist (Fung, Reference Fung2003; Smith, Reference Smith2009), but they can be divided into two broad categories (LeDuc, Reference LeDuc2015; el-Wakil and Strebel, Reference el-Wakil and Strebel2022): direct-democratic processes that include a vote-centric conception of democracy where citizens make decisions directly (Altman, Reference Altman2011; Qvortrup, Reference Qvortrup2013), and deliberative processes, which are based on a talk-centric conception of democracy where citizens rarely make any final decisions, but instead provide advice to formal decision-makers by discussing issues to achieve an enlightened understanding (Grönlund et al., Reference Grönlund, Bächtiger and Setälä2014). Although nuances exist, these two types of participatory processes exemplify important differences in how to involve citizens (el-Wakil and Strebel, Reference el-Wakil and Strebel2022). For the current purposes, it is worth noting that direct democracy frequently involves the use of referendums where citizens decide on issues by casting a vote (Altman, Reference Altman2011; Silagadze and Gherghina, Reference Silagadze and Gherghina2018).Footnote ¹ Deliberative processes, on the other hand, most often consist of different types of institutional bodies where ordinary citizens discuss in smaller groups and provide an output that can be used as guidance by formal decision-makers and/or the general public (Grönlund et al., Reference Grönlund, Bächtiger and Setälä2014). Since people are expected to care about policy outcomes (Arnesen, Reference Arnesen2017; Werner and Marien, 2020), it is likely that they will care more about inequalities in participatory processes where participants have a direct say in the outcome. Hence, political inequalities may be expected to be more concerning in referendums that are usually more decisive compared to discussion forums of a more advisory nature.

Finally, we examine how the consequences of issues moderate how inequalities affect perceptions of legitimacy and usefulness. Several studies demonstrate that outcomes matter to perceptions of decision-making legitimacy (Arnesen, Reference Arnesen2017; Esaiasson et al., Reference Esaiasson, Gilljam and Persson2017; Christensen et al., Reference Christensen, Himmelroos and Setälä2020; Werner and Marien, 2020). While the direct effect of outcome favorability on legitimacy is hardly disputable, the nature of the outcome can even have an indirect effect on how inequalities affect perceptions of legitimacy. We here follow the work of Kinder and Kiewiet (Reference Kinder and Kiewiet1981), who distinguish between sociotropic voters who care more about the economic situation of the nation, and egocentric voters, who use their personal situation to decide how to cast their vote. This distinction has also been used to explore the sources of public opposition to immigration (Solodoch, Reference Solodoch2021). Following this line of reasoning, we assume that people evaluate political decisions either based on their perceived consequences for society at large, or their consequences for the individual in question. A recent study shows that sociotropic and egocentric perceptions of social inequalities have different associations with political participation since people with higher levels of sociotropic concerns about inequalities are more likely to take action (Silagadze et al., Reference Silagadze, Christensen, Sirén and Grönlund2022). Other studies suggest that self-interest plays a larger role when the policy stakes for the individual are great, clear, and salient (Chong et al., Reference Chong, Citrin and Conley2001; Haselswerdt, Reference Haselswerdt2020). All of this shows that whether the issue at hand concern personal matters or society at large, it is likely to have implications for how inequalities affect both aspects of legitimacy. Based on this, our final hypothesis rests on the assumption that effects of inequalities are stronger when personal issues are at stake rather than societal matters:

In the following, we outline how we examine these hypotheses in our studies.

Data and variables

To examine our hypotheses, we conducted two separate studies with survey experiments in Finland. Finland is an established Nordic democracy where strong egalitarian values and consensual political decision-making are dominant norms (Inglehart and Norris, Reference Inglehart and Norris2003; Karvonen, Reference Karvonen2014). At the same time, citizens exhibit high levels of satisfaction with democracy and institutional trust (Bäck et al., Reference Bäck, Kestilä-Kekkonen, Söderlund, Grönlund and Wass2016; Kestilä-Kekkonen and Söderlund, Reference Kestilä-Kekkonen and Söderlund2016), and citizens can engage in various participatory processes, such as the Citizens’ initiative (Huttunen and Christensen, Reference Huttunen and Christensen2020). Finland scores high in gender equality (Inglehart and Norris, Reference Inglehart and Norris2003; OECD, 2018) and in educational equality (OECD, 2021). Nevertheless, reports indicate that a large portion of Finnish people believe that inequalities persist (Nieminen and Attila, Reference Nieminen, Attila and Attila2018). Finland thereby provides an interesting contrast to the USA, where most existing studies have been carried out. The pervasive equality in Finland is likely to strengthen the negative impact of participatory inequalities since they transgress established societal norms. Finland may therefore be considered a ‘most-likely case’ (Eckstein, Reference Eckstein, Greenstein and Polsby1975), since it provides a case where the theoretical relationships are likely to exist.

The data for both studies were collected 19–27 May 2021. For Study 1, 324 respondents filled in the survey while 840 respondents filled in the survey for Study 2. We did a priori power analyses with G * Power 3.1 to establish the necessary number of respondents (Faul et al., Reference Faul, Erdfelder, Buchner and Lang2009). For Study 1, 146 respondents, equally distributed between the groups, were thought to be enough to detect significant differences between the two groups with a statistical power of 0.9 when the expected mean is 3.0 in the control group (where three genuine democratic ideals/threats are presented) and 4.0 in the treatment group (where we include ‘equal participation for all citizens’ in addition to the same three democratic ideals or ‘Inequalities in the political participation of citizens’ as an additional potential threat), even when we assume a high SD of 2.0. To ensure that potential null results are not due to a low number of respondents, we set the target to 300 respondents and received 324 completed survey responses. Hence we are able to detect mean differences with a high level of power, although the number of respondents is insufficient to explore differences across respondents’ characteristics (Ahlquist, Reference Ahlquist2018). For Study 2, 523 respondents give a power of 0.90 for a factorial ANOVA with main effects and interaction effects when we assume an effect size of 0.20 (medium) and alpha = 0.05. We set the target to 800 respondents to be certain we have sufficient power and achieved 840 completed survey responses.

The respondents for both studies were recruited from online panels via Qualtrics. We used quotas to ensure that respondents in both studies reflected the Finnish population when it comes to age, gender, and place of living. Furthermore, respondents were not allowed to take part in both studies to avoid contamination. Information on the characteristics of both samples and the general population is found in the online Appendix 1.

In Study 1, we examine H1 on general attitudes toward political inequality with the help of direct questions on evaluations of various democratic ideals, including participatory equality. Here respondents on a scale 0–10 (10 most important) rated the subjective importance of common democratic ideals: Equality in the possibility for political participation; Free and fair democratic elections; Opposition parties can freely criticize the government; Free media can freely criticize the government; and government works to reduce income inequalities.

Since examining peoples’ attitudes to democratic ideals in surveys is likely to suffer from social desirability bias, we also included two list experiments (LE1 and LE2) that were preregistered for hypotheses, data collection and analysis at https://osf.io/4nbcz/?view_only=12857ff47f1342febcd8c02de07d4f3a. Deviations from the preregistration are noted in online Appendix 2. We included two list experiments to be able to discern whether people consider participatory equality to be imperative for having a proper democracy (LE1) and also whether participatory inequality is considered a danger to the survival of democracy (LE2). In LE1, the sensitive item is ‘Equal participation of all citizens’ while in LE2 it is ‘Inequalities in the participation of citizens’. The treatments here are broad since we do not mention specific forms of participation, but this is intentional since we here aim to examine the impact of participatory inequalities broadly conceived, while we focus on more specific effects in Study 2. Although the two list experiments have similar aims, we considered them sufficiently different so both experiments were randomized completely, meaning an individual could be in the treatment group twice.

The list experiment, or item count technique, is a technique that makes it possible to examine whether people value equality as an important part of democracy even when there is no pressure from social desirability bias as the sensitive question is asked in an indirect fashion (Blair and Imai, Reference Blair and Imai2012; Blair et al., Reference Blair, Imai and Lyall2014). In list experiments, a survey sample is split into randomly assigned treatment and control groups, which are given the same question. The respondents in the treatment group are presented with a list including a sensitive item with several nonsensitive items, while the control group is presented with a list with only the nonsensitive item, and possibly a placebo item to ensure that the number of items is identical (Riambau and Ostwald, Reference Riambau and Ostwald2021). We also include rare items in both groups to avoid ceiling effects that could entail that people feel that their true preferences are exposed (Glynn, Reference Glynn2013). The respondents are asked to indicate how many of the items on the list they agree with or apply to them without indicating which ones, thereby making it possible to answer without selecting the sensitive item. Any differences in mean scores can therefore be attributed to the sensitive item (Kramon and Weghorst, Reference Kramon and Weghorst2019). Table 1 shows the contents of each of the list experiments.

Table 1

Outline of list experiments

Since our main interest here lies in establishing differences between treatment and control groups rather than individual differences, we follow the advice of Ahlquist (Reference Ahlquist2018) and only analyze the results using a simple difference in mean estimate.

In Study 2, we examine hypotheses H2–H5 with a survey experiment where we, with the help of a vignette, examine the direct effects of gender and educational inequalities on outcome legitimacy (H2a and H2b) and the usefulness (H3a and H3b) of the input. Furthermore, we examine whether these associations differ depending on the type of participatory process (H4: Referendum or Discussion forum) and the consequences of the issue (H5: egocentric or sociotropic). This study was also preregistered for the hypotheses, data collection and analysis at https://osf.io/rjqux/?view_only=03c7b3039ae14b78a5c1fb533537f9c0 and deviations from the preregistration are again noted in Appendix 2.

In a vignette survey experiment, respondents are provided with a short description of a scenario, where certain factors or treatments are randomly varied. Respondents are then asked to evaluate the scenario described in one or more variables that constitute the dependent variables (Mutz, Reference Mutz2011). By examining differences in the scores across treatments, it is possible to determine the effect of, and interplay between, all treatments. Such survey experiments thereby combine experimental control of treatments examined on subjects that constitute a representative sample of the population of interest (Mutz, Reference Mutz2011: 1–2).

In Study 2, our vignette is worded as follows (randomized treatments in capital letters):

The study thus has four treatments that correspond to our hypotheses, each with two values (2 × 2 × 2 × 2 design). The gender inequality treatment concerns whether men or women were overrepresented, while the educational treatment concerns whether people with a basic education or a university degree were overrepresented. The issue treatment concerns whether the consequences affect respondents personally or society at large, while the type of participation discerns whether it was a referendum or a discussion forum.

We include two measures that measure the impact on outcome legitimacy:

1. 1. Legitimacy 1: How legitimate do you think this input into the decision-making process is? (Answer on scale 0–100)

2. 2. Legitimacy 2: In your opinion, to what extent should decision-makers follow the advice from this input when making their decision? (Four-graded answer: Completely/In most regards/To some extent/Not at all; this was recoded to also vary between 0–100)

Two other measures probe how respondents consider the usefulness of the input:

1. 3. Usefulness 1: How useful do you think the input will be for decision-makers when adopting new legislation? (Answer on scale 0–100)

2. 4. Usefulness 2: How likely do you believe it is that legislation will be improved as a consequence of this input? (Answer on scale 0–100)

The data is analysed with factorial ANOVAs for each of the four outcomes where we include all possible interaction effects to examine moderating effects of the type of participation and the type of issue.Footnote ³

Analysis

We first report the results of the explicit questions in Study 1 on attitudes toward various democratic ideals, including how people perceive the importance of inequalities in political participation (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Violinplots showing answer distributions for rating democratic ideals.

All ideals are popular among respondents as the mean scores range from 6.67 (standard deviation (SD) = 2.77) for Reducing income inequalities to 8.99 (SD = 1.81) for Free and fair elections. Equal political participation is the second most important (M = 8.61, SD = 1.89). These results indicate that equality in participation is considered among the most important democratic ideals.

To examine whether social desirability bias affects the results, we, in Table 2, report results from our list experiments that give people the chance to reveal their true preferences.Footnote ⁴

Table 2

Mean differences between control group and treatment group

Note: Entries are mean values with standard errors in parentheses. P-values are from a two-sample t-test with equal variance.

The results in LE1 indicates that respondents value equality as a democratic ideal since the mean value is about one point higher in the treatment group. In LE2, the mean in the treatment value is 0.45 higher than in the control group, which shows that respondents consider inequalities in political participation a threat to democracy, albeit not an imminent one as the difference in mean was smaller than in LE1.

These results support H1 and suggest that people do consider equality in participation a valuable democratic ideal. The ensuing question is whether the effects on legitimacy depend on various characteristics? We explore this issue in the vignette survey experiment contained in Study 2.

Figure 2 shows that both decision-making legitimacy and perceived usefulness is generally lower when men are in the majority. Differences are significant for Legitimacy 1 (F(1, 824) = 7.96, P = .005), Usefulness 1 (F(1, 824) = 6.45, P = 0.019) and 2 (F(1, 824) = 6.22, P = 0.013). While the effects are significant, the differences are only about five points on the 0–100 scales, meaning effects sizes are weak, but consistent. As we show later, this is at least partly explained by heterogenous treatment effects across the population. The impact of educational differences is smaller, but there is a weak and insignificant tendency for usefulness to be higher when people with university degrees are overrepresented. The results run in opposite directions for subjective legitimacy, but even here the differences are insignificant. This entails that H2a is supported, but H2b and H3a and H3b are not supported by the evidence. Having a majority of women in participatory processes is generally a good thing for both decision-making legitimacy and perceived usefulness of advice, whereas there are no clear gains when educational groups are over- or underrepresented.Footnote ⁵

Figure 2.

Direct effects of gender and educational inequalities on decision-making legitimacy and usefulness of input.

In Figures 3 and 4 we show results concerning conditional effects depending on type of participation and type of issue consequence.

Figure 3.

Differences in effects across type of participatory process.

Figure 4.

Differences in effects across issue consequence.

The differences across type of participation are small and conflicting regardless of the type of measure and whether we examine gender inequalities or educational inequalities. None of the relevant interaction terms are even close to significance, all of which shows that the effects are consistent across types of participation, contrary to H4.

There are also a few relevant differences across issue consequences regardless of measure and type of inequality. The only minor exception is the interaction effect for gender differences, where the differences are fairly pronounced, since legitimacy is higher when women are overrepresented and the issue consequences are societal, which is reversed when consequences are personal. Nevertheless, the differences are even here under all circumstances nonsignificant although the interaction term approaches significance (F(1, 824) = 3.28, P = 0.071). Furthermore, even this small piece of evidence of substantial differences contradicts our H5 that differences are smaller when consequences concern society at large. This shows that effects are rather similar across issue consequences.

So far, our main finding is the pronounced differences in the effects of participatory inequalities depending on whether they are based on gender or educational differences, which are consistent across the type of participatory process and issue consequences. While we did not preregister any hypotheses on this, there are reasons to believe that disadvantaged groups put greater emphasis on inequalities (Banducci et al., Reference Banducci, Donovan and Karp2004; Clayton et al., Reference Clayton, O’Brien and Piscopo2019). We therefore, in Table 3, explore whether there are substantial differences in effects across the gender and level of education of the respondents.

Table 3

Differences in mean scores across gender and level of education of respondents

The analyses reveal that there are consistent differences in effects of gender inequalities between men and women. There is little difference in mean scores when women are overrepresented between male and female respondents. But when men form the majority, women see procedures as less legitimate, whereas men are more accepting or even approving of this situation across all four measures. For educational inequalities, we again do not discover a similar unambiguous result, since there are no consistent differences between respondents depending on their own educational attainment. These results again show that there are important differences in how people react to inequalities, even among the affected groups.