Finding inequality in an unlikely place: differences in collective congruence between social groups in Belgium

The literature on inequality in representation and policy congruence often focuses on context-level factors such as the interest group system, campaign finance or turnout. Much less theory exists on why we find plenty of variation in the degree to which policy preferences of social groups are unequally represented in one country or context. This paper seeks to fill this void in the literature by developing and testing an issue-level determinants model of inequality in policy congruence. We do so by looking at the case of Belgium. Belgium has the advantage of possessing none of the context factors that cause inequality in congruence, and is thus an ideal case to study an issue-level model. Based on an integrated dataset containing the policy positions of parties and voters on more than 200 policy statements, we study how well the policy preferences of privileged (higher educated and higher incomes) and underprivileged social groups (lower educated and lower incomes) are represented in the federal and regional parliament(s). We find that parliament is biased towards the policy preferences of privileged social groups when privileged and underprivileged groups differ in policy positions. In addition, we find that, when voters of a social group often voted for parties that share their policy views on an issue (‘voted correctly’), parliament is more likely to side with them on that issue. Finally, the representational bias towards the preferences of privileged groups increases on economic and tax policies, but decreases on issues related to social welfare.