Does the Effect of Political Participation Depend on the Status of the Participator?

Privileged citizens are more likely to participate in politics and to be better politically represented. Does unequal participation drive unequal representation? Or are politicians biased toward privileged citizens, regardless of their political activity? While politicians’ biases toward high-status citizens have been documented, the role of political participation therein remains empirically under-researched. Using nearly 40 years of uniquely comprehensive survey data on Swedish politicians and citizens, we provide the most robust observational evidence to date that politicians’ perceptions of public opinion are more consistently aligned with the opinions of the politically active. Motivated by this background evidence, a novel pre-registered survey experiment with Swedish politicians will test whether politicians give greater weight to an identical political activity based solely on the participator’s status. Our integration of observational and experimental findings will provide new answers to the important question of whether low-status citizens could increase their political influence by participating more.