If patterns of political participation were consistently biased along class lines, democracy’s promise of political equality would be broken, writes Eva Krick. And yet, this is exactly what research shows. Fortunately, recent studies also point to various institutional remedies.
Political participation today is heavily distorted to the advantage of the better-off. The social selection effect varies somewhat with the indicator used to measure social inequality (eg, income, occupational prestige or education), but the “participation gap” is a fact. Indeed, regrettably, this gap is widening.
When it comes to traditional forms of participation, research across the affluent countries of Europe and the US shows increasing gaps in the electoral participation rates of the poor versus the rich, the least versus the most well educated and professions with lower versus higher social status. As Lea Elsässer and others show, this effect of unequal voting is particularly strong among the young (and particularly weak in the more egalitarian democracies of northern Europe). For issue-specific votes in referenda, empirical studies have shown a similar “turnout gap”: citizens with higher socio-economic status participate more frequently in popular votes on propositions. And while the picture varies a bit with the type of civic engagement, a recent review study overall shows a negative relationship between social inequality, measured by income, and civic engagement in groups in Europe and the US. In other words: the poorer engage less.
At present, alternative forms of expressing voice offer little cause for optimism, either. Despite high hopes concerning the inclusion of regular citizens and marginalised voices, deliberative (and especially lot-based) participation forums have generally not fulfilled expectations. There is a lot of variation between cases and many admirable examples, but overall, dialogue-based forms of participation tend to provide an extra opportunity for the already-privileged to have their say, while the socioeconomically disadvantaged, as well as younger people, women and those with a migration background, are clearly under-represented. What’s more, because the participation gap of “innovative” methods of engagement is usually more pronounced than with traditional channels of participation, the recent boom of these formats exacerbates political inequality even further.
What, then, can be done?
The basic options for improving participation
To be sure, participation will never be perfect. There will always be mechanisms of exclusion at play – and who is included in our idea of “the people” is contested and changes with time. Women’s voting rights were hard-earned and our understanding of “universal suffrage” so far does not include children, those without citizenship or future generations. There are also practical limits to extending the rule of the people. Not everyone can co-decide on everything that affects them. Universal participation would be impossible to organise and likely overstrain the capacities of citizens. There are very good reasons for a certain division of labour in the political realm.
But even if we content ourselves with selecting representatives to deal with most of our collective problems and engage personally only on those issues we find most pressing, the question remains: how do we ensure political equality in the participation process?
The most straightforward intervention would surely be to target socio-economic inequalities directly, for instance by redistributing wealth. We could also follow participatory democrats such as Carole Pateman and democratise the everyday by maximising worker participation and introducing a basic income, for instance. But even if we aim slightly lower and focus more directly at channels of political participation, research points to a range of ways of boosting the political involvement of marginalised groups by constructing more inclusive participatory institutions.
How to construct more inclusive participatory institutions
Out of all the modes of participation, elections still manage to attract the most diverse crowd. This has to do with the relatively low threshold of the act of voting, the attention focused on this relatively rare event, and the mobilisation efforts of strong intermediary actors, such as political parties and interest groups.
Benny Geys shows how turnout is increased further by “get-out-and-vote” campaigns and by higher campaign spending. Besides these, automatic registration procedures, relatively easy voting procedures, compulsory voting systems and more proportional systems are also associated with higher turnout rates, as Aina Gallego has shown, for instance. Armin Schäfer and others argue that young voters need to be mobilised to use their voting right as early as possible, because whether citizens become habitual voters depends on the very first (eligible) election in life. For issue-specific votes, key drivers are the issue’s salience and a low level of complexity, hence framing makes a lot of difference, as Andreas Goldberg and Pascal Sciarini have shown.
Deliberative formats such as lot-based “mini-publics” are among the most demanding when it comes to the resources and commitment of participants. Those with less discursive experience, less efficacy (that is, trust or confidence that their political views will be heard) and fewer resources of time and money are clearly disadvantaged, here. Sophisticated sampling measures can help select a cross-section of society, but to avoid self-exclusion after being chosen by lot, skilled facilitators and compensations are just as important as innovative outreach recruitment activities to convince selected participants that they have something important to contribute. For admirable results in that respect, see for instance the participation projects Losland and Hallo Bundestag in Germany.
It also makes a lot of sense to “meet people where they are”, for instance by asking for their views at work or in classrooms. Participation patterns can furthermore be diversified by combining different input channels with varying entry hurdles and demands to participation. For instance, a citizen assembly can be linked with an online debate forum, an expert panel, a public survey and a stakeholder panel, thus creating the highly potent multi-level arenas of participation that I discuss in a recent study.
When the aim is to strengthen the voices of the socially marginalised, participation via organised groups is key, because the powerless depend to a great degree on spokespersons to represent their interests vis-á-vis policy-makers. Their efforts can be supported in targeted ways by granting marginalised groups legal involvement rights, by setting up representative bodies, by providing trainings for those who get engaged to speak for the group and by channeling public funding into the self-organisation of groups with fewer resources. The case of youth participation in Norway, with its mandatory local- and regional-level youth councils, its national youth panels on specific youth-related issues, its influential, ministry-funded students’ unions and visible umbrella organisation of 100 youth organisations, offers a very good example for this.
The self-reinforcing effect of more balanced participation patterns
All of these institutional measures contribute to making participation more equal. What’s more, in the longer run, more balanced participation patterns can in turn reduce social inequalities because the preferences of the less-well-to-do will in all probability be better considered in policy-making – thus making redistributive and equal treatment policies more likely. Better access to resources and feelings of efficacy may then further mobilise the less privileged to engage more. This self-reinforcing effect might even restore these groups’ trust in the system, which has been particularly low among the socio-economically disadvantaged and is one of the keys to understanding self-exclusion from participatory opportunities.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s). They do not represent the position of LSE Inequalities, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credits: Drazen Zigic and Lana Sham via Shutterstock.
