Research

This article examines whether politicians in Spain address the political demands of women and men equally. Recent literature has consistently focused on understanding unequal responsiveness on the basis of social class and income level, ignoring a fundamental aspect that generates political inequality: gender. Our article follows a recent approach that seeks to establish the existence of unequal responsiveness based on gender, analysing data from almost the entire democratic period in Spain (1978–2018). The article shows that policymakers in Spain favour men’s preferences over women’s, especially on issues with high gender disagreement. Although this gap exists, it is often small and most pronounced when it comes to gender-specific issues. Additionally, women from lower socio-economic backgrounds face the most neglect, revealing compounded gender and class biases. The existence of left-wing governments or a stronger descriptive representation of women does not necessarily lead to a better consideration of women by political elites. 

How can we explain the long-term decline in the class cleavage observed in high-income democracies since the 1960s? The causes of this decline are far from being fully understood. We hypothesise that the decline in the class cleavage between the working class and other classes is connected to the shrinkage of the working class, increases in economic prosperity and a reduction in levels of inequality. To test these hypotheses, we use a newly-assembled dataset including 16 advanced democracies with a long temporal coverage (1964-2019) and a class voting index based on the difference between the proportion of a particular social class in a party’s electorate and the proportion of this social class in the electorate as a whole. Models using country fixed effects confirm a decline in the class cleavage across Western democracies. Controlling for several political variables, the size of the working class constitutes the best predictor of declines in class voting in affluent democracies. 

This paper examines the class gap in voter turnout, a key and understudied aspect of unequal turnout that is essential to ensuring the equal responsiveness and proper functioning of democracy. I focus on the influence that macroeconomic factors such as unemployment and inequality have on differences in turnout by social class. The main argument is that these factors have a differential impact on individuals depending on their social class, with the working class experiencing lower turnout due to a disproportionate loss of resources and power when inequality and unemployment are higher. Using a comprehensive dataset covering 15 Western democracies over a 50-year period, and a two-step analysis that includes year fixed effects, the results show that when unemployment is high, the working class tends to withdraw from voting, widening the class gap in turnout. In contrast to previous findings, there is no evidence of a widening trend in the class gap. 

Turnout inequality is on the rise in most advanced democracies. Even though education is a key determinant of individual voter turnout, its macro-level expansion has not led to an increase and equalisation of turnout, but the opposite. This paper addresses this puzzle by examining the role of educational expansion –tertiary education in particular– in widening the turnout gap in post-industrial democracies. Drawing on the relative education model, I argue that status anxiety emerges for those without tertiary education in societies where average education attainment keeps increasing. This is not a story of relative deprivation, which can mobilise political participation. Instead, status anxiety diminishes internal political efficacy, demobilising non-tertiary-educated citizens and exacerbating turnout inequality. Using a database comprising 15 Western democracies over 60 years (1964–2024), I show that turnout inequality has increased over time due to a sharper decline in turnout among citizens without higher education. Multilevel interactive models reveal that rising average education levels strengthen the association between individual education and voter turnout, indicating a widening turnout gap. Moreover, I confirm the expectation that non-tertiary-educated individuals increasingly withdraw from voting as the proportion of tertiary-educated citizens grows. Potential compositional effects arising from self-selection into education are addressed through additional robustness checks. This paper advances not only the study of turnout inequality but also the broader field of electoral participation, emphasising the importance of considering structural factors and their consequences for social hierarchies when explaining longitudinal trends in political participation. 

The European Union (EU) social contract faces mounting challenges as radical right-wing parties gain support across member states. Surprisingly, levels of trust in European institutions are at historic highs, as demonstrated by longitudinal data and corroborated by recent literature. While trust has significantly improved since the 2008 economic crisis, the distribution of trust responses suggests possible polarization, according Bauer and Morisi’s (2023) insights into trust dynamics in times of crisis. In this paper, we investigate the socio-demographic shifts among citizens expressing very low trust in the European Parliament and explore how radical right-wing parties, by mobilizing previously abstaining voters, may paradoxically reinforce democratic participation. Understanding shifts in this profile over time could illuminate patterns of disillusionment or alienation among certain groups. Finally, we analyze public preferences for policy-making authority—whether delegated to the EU or retained nationally—and its relationship with trust. These findings illuminate trust’s pivotal role in shaping and sustaining the EU’s evolving social contract during an era of polycrisis.