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Does Class Shape Legislators’ Approach to Inequality and Economic Policy? A Comparative View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2020

Alexander Hemingway Open the ORCID record for Alexander Hemingway [Opens in a new window]
Alexander Hemingway*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
*
*Corresponding author. Email: alexhemingway@alumni.ubc.ca
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Abstract

Do the class backgrounds of legislators shape their views and actions relating to inequality and economic policy? Building on findings about ‘white-collar government’ in the US, this article examines the relationship between legislators’ class and their attitudes and self-reported behaviour in advanced democracies, drawing on survey data from 15 countries including 73 national and subnational parliaments in Europe and Israel. I find that legislators from business backgrounds are more likely to support income inequality and small government, as well as less likely to consult with labour groups, than those from working-class and other backgrounds. These results are buttressed by analysis of an additional cross-national survey of European legislative candidates’ attitudes, which replicates key findings. Given the skewed class makeup of legislatures in advanced democracies, these findings may be relevant to our understanding of widespread economic and political inequalities that are increasingly salient in many countries.

Keywords

classrepresentationpolitical economypublic policy

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Type
Article
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Government and Opposition , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 84 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Government and Opposition Limited

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