A growing body of literature documents that political elites are less responsive to political preferences of poor citizens than they are to the ones of richer citizens. One central interpretation of these studies that mostly concentrate on the US case is that the rise of economic inequality in recent decades is linked to growing inequalities in the representation of less affluent citizens and that political and economic inequalities are reinforcing one another. We test this argument of a vicious cycle in a comparative setting with longitudinal data. Our findings suggest that the responsiveness of European political parties is highly skewed towards the more affluent and that macroeconomic is mediating this gap in representation. These findings have important implications for our understanding of representation in Europe. In particular, they suggest that the macroeconomic context plays a major role in shaping party behaviour and representational quality
