IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v8y2020i1p19-27.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Democracy or Oligarchy? Unequal Representation of Income Groups in European Institutions

Author

Listed:
  • Zoe Lefkofridi

    (Department of Political Science, University of Salzburg, Austria)

  • Nathalie Giger

    (Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Geneva, Switzerland)

Abstract

In this study we examine the representation of income groups in two EU-level institutions, the Council and the European Parliament. We find that the political positions of these institutions, and especially of the Council, are always on the right compared to European citizens, though closer to the wealthy among them. However, a more systematic analysis of congruence between different income groups and the Council reveals that while the poor are systematically underrepresented, the rich are not systematically over-represented. This holds both when we examine the poor and the rich across the EU as a whole and when we cluster them according to their respective member states.

Suggested Citation

  • Zoe Lefkofridi & Nathalie Giger, 2020. "Democracy or Oligarchy? Unequal Representation of Income Groups in European Institutions," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 19-27.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v8:y:2020:i:1:p:19-27
    DOI: 10.17645/pag.v8i1.2526
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/2526
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/pag.v8i1.2526?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v8:y:2020:i:1:p:19-27. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.