Replication Data for: Cabinet Ministers and Inequality

Scholars and commentators increasingly wonder whether governments’ failure to address socio-economic inequalities is the result of unequal representation. Recent literature on policy responsiveness in the United States and Europe finds evidence that party and parliamentary policy proposals and actual policy outcomes are closer to the preferences of the rich than of the poor. However, the extent and character of such unequal representation remains thinly understood. Among the most thinly understood are the mechanisms: the political conditions that link socio-economic inequalities to unequal representation. This article thickens our understanding of (unequal) representation by investigating the class composition of parliamentary cabinets and its effect on social welfare policy. With the aid of a new dataset on cabinet ministers' social class, the article shows that responsiveness to the social welfare preferences of poorer voters varies by cabinet ministers’ professional backgrounds, above and beyond the partisan orientation of the government.

学者与评论界日益关注一个核心议题：各国政府未能有效解决社会经济不平等问题，是否源于代议不公（unequal representation）。近年来针对美国与欧洲政策回应性的研究文献显示，政党及议会的政策提案与实际政策结果，更贴合富裕群体而非贫困群体的政策偏好。然而，此类代议不公的波及范围与本质特征，迄今仍未得到充分阐释，其中研究最为薄弱的环节是其作用机制——即连接社会经济不平等与代议不公的各类政治条件。本文通过考察议会内阁的阶级构成及其对社会福利政策的影响，深化了学界对（代议不公）的认知。本文依托一套关于内阁大臣社会阶级的全新数据集，研究表明：除却政府的党派倾向之外，内阁大臣的职业背景差异，会显著影响其对贫困选民社会福利偏好的政策回应程度。