The non-descriptive sources of the substantive representation of the poor. A text-based analysis of the behaviors of legislators in the German Bundestag

Economic inequality is a main concern in many established democracies. The proclivity of MPs to speak up on this issue in the legislative arena is likely to affect policy making in this regard, i.e. the extent to which decision makers consider the interest and demands of the economically disadvantaged. This paper explores the substantive representation of the poor in view of the German case and on the basis of a quantitative text-based analysis of legislators’ floor speeches. In this analysis, we gauge the extent to which German MPs reference poor people such as welfare recipients in their floor speeches and the factors that explain their motivation of doing so. Theoretically, we ask about the strategic as compared to the descriptive sources of their behavior, e.g. whether leftist MPs particularly speak up for the economically disadvantaged, those representing depressed districts, or those with relevant committee assignments. Since the fair descriptive representation of the economically disadvantaged is an unlikely case in modern professionalized legislatures, exploring the non-descriptive sources of making their interests heard is of key importance. Empirically, the analysis draws from the legislative activities of all 709 German MPs in the 19th Bundestag and employs a dictionary approach that is derived from the manifest concerns of relevant social organizations to estimate whether and why legislators speak for the poor.