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Degrees of influence: Educational inequality in policy representation
Author(s) -
SCHAKEL WOUTER,
VAN DER PAS DAPHNE
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/1475-6765.12405
Subject(s) - inequality , politics , government (linguistics) , representation (politics) , public policy , competition (biology) , public opinion , education policy , political science , higher education , political economy , economics , development economics , economic growth , mathematical analysis , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , law , biology
Education plays an important role in the political, social and economic divisions that have recently characterised Western Europe. Despite the many analyses of education and its political consequences, however, previous research has not investigated whether government policy caters more to the preferences of the higher educated than to the preferences of the lower educated. We address this question using an original dataset of public opinion and government policy in the Netherlands. This data reveals that policy representation is starkly unequal. The association between support for policy change and actual change is much stronger for highly educated citizens than for low and middle educated citizens, and only the highly educated appear to have any independent influence on policy. This inequality extends to the economic and cultural dimensions of political competition. Our findings have major implications for the educational divide in Western Europe, as they reflect both a consequence and cause of this divide.