Unequal Policy Responsiveness in the Global South: Class, Gender, and Ethnicity in Brazil and South Africa

Contrary to the democratic ideal that elected officials should represent the preferences of all citizens, research increasingly shows that politicians are more responsive to the preferences of the affluent. Originating in the United States, this line of research has been replicated in rich democracies across Europe with similar findings. Recently, scholars have broadened their focus to include other forms of inequality, such as the responsiveness to men versus women. Our study extends this research in two key ways. First, we focus on two middle-income democracies of the Global South: Brazil and South Africa. Second, we expand the analysis of unequal responsiveness to include not only class and gender, but also ethnicity. We collect public opinion survey data from 1988 to 2020 in Brazil and from 1994 to 2020 in South Africa to determine the preferences of different groups of citizens and we assess which policies were approved in their parliaments. Our findings contribute to the broader discussion on unequal representation by applying this research agenda to new contexts and incorporating additional dimensions of inequality.