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In this paper I aim to provide a novel account of the Democratic Argument for limitarianism. I first claim that the standard version of this argument is questionable due to its reliance on a problematic central premise, namely that excessive wealth damages democracy because of its detrimental impact on political equality. Subsequently, I relocate the fundamental democratic worry in regard to excessive wealth in the process of backsliding, and more specifically in the relation between excessive wealth and political polarization. I then offer a new account of the Democratic Argument for limitarianism which envisages wealth capping as instrumental for democratic resilience, but I maintain that the argument is not unambiguously successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Amme Idaresi Dergisi is the property of Public Administration Institute for Turkey & the Middle East (TODAIE) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Social inequalities fuel a debate about the meaning of political equality. Formal procedural equality is criticised for reproducing discriminatory outcomes against disadvantaged groups but affirmative action, particularly in the form of group quotas, is also contested. When opposing conceptions of substantive equality support divergent views about which procedural rule genuinely respects political equality, democracies cannot identify a standard or rule of procedural fairness to be widely accepted as fair. This dispute over procedural fairness can carry on indefinitely and could challenge democracy's legitimacy claim. I argue that democracies can renew their legitimacy claim by embracing this debate and by accommodating it through constitutional deliberation that must be as impartial and meaningful as possible. Impartiality ideally requires the presence of every citizen in this process because each of them has a unique and evolving experience of inequality. Meaningful deliberation is about offering periodic opportunities for constitutional reform, allowing for continuous feedback, reflection, and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social or relational egalitarians try to defend democracy non-instrumentally as a constitutive element of a society where no one stands as inferior or superior to anyone else. However, they face an instrumentalist challenge from within: Why not uphold a non-democratic regime if it outperforms democracy in protecting or promoting egalitarian social relations, for example, by stably producing substantive political decisions that guard against social hierarchies? This article explores the best response to this challenge from the social egalitarian non-instrumentalist standpoint. It argues that the instrumentalist challenge can be accommodated without abandoning the essential non-instrumentalist commitment to democracy; while a nondemocratic regime may be justified under less-than-ideal circumstances as a contingently effective means to realize more social equality, democracy can nevertheless be viewed as a necessary condition for the realization of full social equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of minoritized representatives is considered essential to advance the interests and inclusion of minoritized groups. But do minoritized citizens prefer politicians like them? Drawing on nineteen focus groups (N = 98) with minoritized Dutch and German citizens, I ask how citizens evaluate (descriptive) representatives. Citizens see descriptive representation as intersectional. They value politicians – regardless of descriptive status – who imagine their lived reality, politically judge, and act on that basis, and enhance emancipation and group legitimacy. Many see descriptive representatives as better able to do so. Yet, in practice, citizens examine if descriptive politicians share their political judgements and act for them within established politics. The findings suggest that increasing numbers is necessary but not sufficient. Whether citizens perceive representation depends on the space descriptive representatives have within the political system to articulate marginalized identities and concerns. Citizens’ evaluations reflect differences in self-identification, privilege/disadvantage, group histories, electoral systems, and representation legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philanthropy is a contentious and often polarising topic within egalitarian social movements. There are good reasons for this. Philanthropy is reliant on the inequalities inherent in the capitalist system, is fundamentally at odds with democratic relationships, and can moderate or control the activities of recipients. This article therefore starts from the premise that philanthropy violates egalitarian ideals in very significant ways. However, it goes on to suggest that, absent a ruptural change that would drastically weaken the bases of philanthropic wealth, there is a strategic and contingent case for its selective use so long as it pushes existing configurations of power in more egalitarian directions. In making this case, the article draws primarily on the work of Wright (2010) but also on recent developments in the political theory of philanthropy. It calls for a critical literacy around philanthropy that combines an openness to experimentation with a clear-eyed sense of its significant risks. In this respect, it outlines specific conditions and strategies that movements should adopt if they pursue or accept philanthropic funding. Firstly, movements must deliberately articulate and actively defend their transformative vision, clarifying in the process the tactical place of philanthropy within this. Secondly, they must resist funder conditionalities, and preserve egalitarian modes of organising in the face of practices which undermine participatory ideals and threaten relations of care and solidarity. The article's chief contribution is to integrate normative insights with lessons from the sociological literature on movement-philanthropy relations, for the sake of systematically untangling a live and troublesome issue within the praxis of radical movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One strategy in defence of compulsory voting is based on what I call the non-instrumental value of high turnout: the idea that almost-universal participation in elections is valuable per se. This article argues that we do not have democratic reasons to value compelled turnout. First, thanks to an original analysis of the practice of voting, I identify three constitutive rules that make the physical acts of marking and casting a ballot count as proper voting. This preliminary analysis serves to illuminate the fact that the act of voting has democratic value if it is performed in a free and reason-responsive way. Second, I identify political equality and popular control as democratic values that high turnout expresses. Finally, the article rejects the non-instrumental case for compulsory voting because it cannot ensure that people vote in a reason-responsive way and, if they do not, high turnout lacks democratic value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this critical comment, we argue that nondemocratic, but decent regimes fail to constitute legitimate governance under Applbaum's free group agency account. To make this case, we first introduce the three principles of liberty, equality and agency that Applbaum takes to flow directly from his free agency conception of legitimacy. Against this backdrop, we discuss Applbaum's claim that a nondemocratic regime along the lines of a Rawlsian decent consultation hierarchy could meet the threshold of legitimacy. Contrary to this suggestion, we argue that nondemocratic, but decent regimes cannot claim legitimacy under Applbaum's account because they are constitutively inegalitarian, thus failing to adequately grant citizens the equal normative power without which legitimacy is unattainable under the free group agency account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ganghof's Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarianism advances three main claims: an innovative typology of comparative government, introducing the category of semi-parliamentarianism; an explication of two conceptions of majority rule, simple majoritarianism and complex majoritarianism; and a demonstration that there are viable systems of government embodying the political equality associated with each majoritarian conception. This paper explains these claims and identifies issues discussed in this symposium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comment encourages normative democratic theorists to attend to the agenda for democratic theory that Steffen Ganghof sets in Beyond Parliamentarism and Presidentialism. I discuss Ganghof's distinction between 'procedural' and 'process' equality. I conclude with a meta-theoretical question about how theorists should think about advocacy for large-scale constitutional systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to critical reflections on my Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism by Sarah Birch, Kevin J. Elliott, Claudia Landwehr and James L. Wilson. It discusses how different types of representative democracy, especially different forms of government (presidential, parliamentary or hybrid), can be justified. It clarifies, among other things, the distinction between procedural and process equality, the strengths of semi-parliamentary government, the potential instability of constitutional designs, and the difference that theories can make in actual processes of constitutional reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International lawyers can no longer afford to ignore the growth of regional orderings under the umbrella of international law and their political consequences. There are, the author argues, at least two concerns RIO s may help us address when thinking about the future of the international institution of (States) peoples and organising it to secure more political legitimacy: sovereignty and democracy. With respect to sovereignty qua ultimate political authority, first, RIO s enable us to consider the virtues of multiple and shared external sovereignty in international relations and the possibility of a regional ordering of dispersed sovereignty as a shield to protect the same albeit multiply reinstituted peoples qua publics against domination, and this both inside their States and in their international relations. Second, with respect to democracy, RIO s enable us to approach international democracy, and especially international democratic representation, in a pluralistic albeit systemic way: peoples may be reinstituted into different publics by multiple institutions over time, such as their States, but also by one or more RIO s in their region, and giving those representative institutions a role in international law-making could strengthen political equality by compensating demographic and power imbalances between States while also requiring those RIO s to become more egalitarian and accountable in return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates on the proportionality of political representation surfaced repeatedly, and in similar forms, from the English to the American and French Revolutions. They contributed to shaping those revolutions' outcomes and, through them, to the emergence of modern democracy – especially so as they were linked up with voting rights: demands to make seats in assemblies more numerically proportionate to electorates – in other words, to weigh all votes equally – implied the equal weight of individual votes and thus also entailed calls for more equal standards regarding the right to vote. This did not yet signify voting rights for all: only specific categories of individuals – as a rule, male and propertied – were considered, even by the most 'enlightened' writers, to be politically entitled. Nevertheless, it was only one step from here to envisage voting rights for all individuals – or at least, for the time being, for all male individuals – as can also be seen in all three revolutions. If claims for more proportional and equal representation showed their full impact only on the American and French Revolutions, finally, this was due to the intervening emergence of statistics (or 'political arithmetic') as a tool of reflection and debate that gave numbers and calculations increasing persuasive power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that the political and economic domains are analogous for distributive purposes. The upshot of this conclusion is that because we normally think that an unequal distribution of votes is objectionable even if these inequalities are strictly necessary to improve the lives of less informed voters, so we should conclude that an unequal distribution of resources might be similarly objectionable even if strictly necessary to make the worse off better off. Leveling down economic resources is therefore sometimes morally permissible. I consider and reject three types of objections to this view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pragmatism, political equality, recognition, democracy, engaged scholarship Keywords: pragmatism; political equality; recognition; democracy; engaged scholarship EN pragmatism political equality recognition democracy engaged scholarship 872 876 5 10/03/23 20231001 NES 231001 Reading this set of responses to my work left me feeling profoundly awed and humbled, ready to settle into a deep silence. Chambers is right to say that in the U.S. our politics currently involves not only polarization but also radicalization. [Extracted from the article]

Political theorists concerned with ways to counteract the oligarchic tendencies of representative government have recently paid more attention to the employment of "class-specific institutions" (CSIs)—that is, political institutions that formally exclude wealthy elites from decision-making power. This article disputes a general objection levelled against the justifiability of CSIs, according to which their democratic credentials are outweighed by their explicit transgression of formal political equality—what I call the political equality objection. I claim that, although CSIs do not satisfy political equality fully, their exclusionary thrust is inter alia justified in virtue of the fact that they unfold against the background of badly ordered, class-divided societies. Parallel to recent arguments in nonideal theory arguing for the priority of the right to resist economic oppression over the protection of private property rights, access to the empowering properties of CSIs should take priority over the full satisfaction of formal political equality. Yet, I also claim that the justification of CSIs depends on their orientation toward overcoming class divisions because, otherwise, we might end up wrongly naturalizing those divisions—a conclusion that needs to be avoided to reply to the political equality objection. The result is, I believe, a convincing egalitarian case for the democratic justifiability of CSIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In democracies around the world, the rich exercise a disproportionate share of political power. Democratic theorists universally condemn this. The current paper brings balance to this conversation by mustering a defense of limited oligarchy. I have two goals. First, I shall argue that we need not be overly despondent about the wealthy's outsized influence, for overrepresentation of the wealthy performs some good for us—good which might not be entirely obvious at first glance. Second, I hope to temper reform efforts that seek to limit the wealthy's influence. While the people should have a greater say than they currently do, the wealthy's influence should still be greater than what their numbers suggest. I ultimately embrace oligarchic bicameralism, an old idea that proposes ordinary persons be represented in the lower chamber of the legislature, and property be represented in the upper. This is accomplished through a combination of sortition and elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are there any prima facie reasons that democracies might have for disenfranchising older citizens? This question reflects increasingly salient, but often incompletely theorized complaints that members of democratic publics advance about older citizens' electoral influence. Rather than rejecting these complaints out of hand, we explore whether, suitably reconstructed, they withstand democratic scrutiny. More specifically, we examine whether the account of political equality that seems to most fittingly capture the logic of these complaints – namely, equal opportunity of political influence over electoral outcomes – can justify disenfranchising older citizens. We conclude that equal opportunity of influence cannot ground a blanket disenfranchisement of older people and that, taken in conjunction with other general considerations that apply to all sound electoral policies, partial disenfranchisement proposals (i.e. proposals for reducing the electoral influence of older citizens via age-weighted voting) are both quasi-inapplicable and practically unrobust across a relevant range of political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Quaestio Iuris (QI) is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Derecho del Estado is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, I explore the implications of three moral grounds for the justification of supported voting – respect as opacity, respect as equal status, and respect as political care. For each ground, I ask whether it justifies surrogate voting for voters unable to either communicate or give effect to their electoral judgments, due to some cognitive or communicative disability. (Henceforth: incommunicability cases.) I argue that respect as opacity does not permit surrogate voting, and equal status does not justify such support – although the latter account can make sense of the value loss involved in the persistent non-participation of individuals with cognitive and communicative disabilities. Finally, I argue that an account of supported voting based on the ethics of political care can accommodate a pro tanto moral permission to provide surrogate voting as a form of support in incommunicability cases, and it can account for the inclusive approach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to supported decision-making. However, I show that in incommunicability cases, what the political community and individual caretakers ultimately owe to adult fellow citizens as equal members of the political community is some adequate form of political care – but not necessarily surrogate voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do minoritized citizens think about the politicians that represent them? How should they act and be? Drawing on 19 focus group interviews with 98 participants with a migration background in Germany and the Netherlands, we find that citizens' evaluation of politicians depends on several factors. Politicians should be responsive, accessible, inclusive, and empathetic. Some participants consider empathy an essential quality for non-descriptive politicians in particular, since they do not have a descriptive or experiential connection with ethnically minoritized communities. Whether participants evaluate descriptive political actors positively or negatively depends on their sociopolitical identification, ideological preference, and the representative's perceived assimilation within the party. Finally, political systems and histories of diversity in representation influence what ethnically minoritized citizens consider to be a good representative. But, the super politicians of their dreams are scarce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to indicate the roots of public law in the Constitutionalism in which the prerequisites for the citizens of the country to participate in public affairs as well as the basis for developing the concept of political participation were provided. This study examines the topic in the works of one of the famous jurists of this era. The concept of political participation should be developed by restricting both claims and obstacles. First, it had to constitutionalize the independent monarchy that it considered the whole country as its absolute property, and then recognized an authority for the public in public affairs, which was previously under the authority of the jurists. Both of these obstacles were removed through the concept of political equality. It was for years that concepts were being prepared in the workshop of Constitutionalism to create equality of humankind. Even a concept like representation was the result and implication of the concept of political equality. Within concepts such as "common house", "thirty crores" and "public affairs", the notion of political equality of the people of the country was developed and with the help of such foundation, thinking about such concepts was made possible. The present paper indicates that the emergence of these concepts was a sign of a fundamental change in the basis of sovereignty and its transfer from the king to the people on the one hand and the establishment of a kind of the public authority on the other hand.

Copyright of Revista Derecho del Estado is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The distinction between equality and sufficiency, much discussed in the distributive justice literature, is here applied to democratic theory. Overlooking this distinction can have significant normative implications, undermining some defences and criticisms of political equality, as I show by discussing the work of three prominent democratic theorists: Thomas Christiano, David Estlund, and Mark Warren. Most importantly, Christiano sometimes defends egalitarian conclusions using sufficientarian premises, or worries about inequality in situations where insufficiency is also part of the problem; inequality above the level of sufficiency is not always as troubling. Estlund makes the reverse error. He attacks rather than defends political egalitarianism, but insufficiency seems to explain some of his concerns. Nonetheless, I show that political egalitarians may need to specify a sufficientarian threshold, to avoid levelling-down objections. Democratic theorists should thus take seriously the distinction between political equality and political sufficiency. More generally, political theorists and philosophers should be aware of omitted variable bias and interaction effects due to conceptual stretching arising from under-theorised distinctions in their thought experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the important discussions in the political thought is the equality or inequality of human beings. Any image about equality can have a variety of effects in people’s political life. Investigating and explaining the view of Islamic thinkers on this subject can be useful, both theoretically and practically, in strategies of the states and Islamic societies. The main questions here are posed as follows: “What is the view presented by Allameh Tabatabaʾi as the Islamic philosopher and commentator of the Quran about the political equality?” and “Are the society members equal from the angel of the nature and from the theoretical viewpoint in political participation, administering the society and political power?” The hypothesis of this article is that the political equality has not been used directly as a topic in Allameh Tabatabaʾi’s works; but considering his system of thoughts and posing the social and political issues, we can extract his views on political thought. Accordingly, the principles of political equality such as the equal basic rights in relation to others and in the relationship between the state and the individuals and equality before law have been accepted. This study has used the descriptive-analytical method and content analysis to extract Allameh Tabatabaʾi’s views. In the light of citizen rights, people can – considering their equal role in social administration – choose the ruler and the form of ruling through consultation, and can have the right to policy-making and supervising in making legislation and decision-making related to administering the society. People enjoy equal right and equal votes in ruling and administering the society.

Democratic theorists have long emphasized the importance of participatory equality, that is, that all citizens should have an equal right to participate. It is still unclear, however, whether ordinary citizens view this principle as central to democracy and how different violations of this principle affect subjective democratic legitimacy. The attitudes of citizens are imperative when it comes to the subjective legitimacy of democratic systems, and it is therefore important to examine how participatory inequalities affect these attitudes. We here contribute to this research agenda with survey experiments embedded in two surveys (n = 324, n = 840). We here examine (1) whether citizens consider participatory inequality to be an important democratic principle, and (2) how gender and educational inequalities affect subjective legitimacy and the perceived usefulness of the participatory input. The results show that citizens generally consider participatory inequalities to be important, but only gender inequalities affect subjective legitimacy and usefulness. Hence it is important to consider the type of inequality to understand the implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tópicos is the property of Asociacion Revista de Filosofia de Santa Fe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this review essay, I explore the consequences of growing economic inequality within advanced democracies. My aim is not to provide novel empirical evidence but to stitch together disparate threads of existing literature to make the case that growing economic inequality should be viewed as one of the most significant problems afflicting industrialized democratic societies today. I begin by defining the concept of economic inequality and by outlining the methods for measuring this phenomenon empirically. In this section, I encourage scholars to shift away from complex indices in favor of decile ratios that are more legible to the public. Next, I summarize trends in income and wealth inequality within advanced democracies to illustrate the growing scale of the problem in recent decades. Subsequently, I make the case that rising economic inequality should be viewed as a concern of utmost importance for political economists by reviewing the literature in three key issue areas that may be adversely impacted by rising levels of inequality: political equality, far-right populism, and economic growth. In scientific terms, economic inequality is conceptualized as an independent variable, and I examine its impact on relevant dependent variables. I conclude by making a call to action with the hope of mobilizing scholars across countries and academic disciplines to study the determinants of rising economic inequality, and to advocate for policy measures to combat the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political egalitarians tend to defend equal distributions of voting power at specific times, as in 'one election, one vote'. Appealing as it is, the principle seems incompatible with distributing power proportionally to the stakes voters have at different elections, as in 'one stake, one vote'. This article argues that the tension above stems from the temporal scope ascribed to political equality, as at specific moments of democratic decision-making instead of over entire lives. More specifically, ascribing a lifetime view to political equality renders equality compatible with proportionality at different elections. I first show that storable votes differ from standard votes in their distinctive commitment to lifetime political equality. I then argue that storable voting schemes are compatible with three key reasons to value political equality: equal consideration of interests, relational equality, and non-domination. Finally, storable votes are also consistent with proportionality at specific times. I conclude that the neglected idea of lifetime political equality can, through storable votes, deliver proportionality without inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a critical analysis of Ingrid Robeyns' "economic limitarianism" (2017, 2019, 2022), the suggestion that there is a moral case against allowing people to be richer than they need to be in order to achieve full flourishing. Wealth above a certain "riches line" lacks value and should be capped at that level. Robeyns claims that limitarianism is justified as a partial theory of economic justice, since vast wealth is a threat to political equality and the revenue raised from taxing wealth can be used to meet urgent needs. She also claims that limitarianism is problem-driven philosophy and should be judged by its capacity to address problems in the world as it is. The argument in this article is that limitarianism fails on its own premises, both as partial theory of justice and as guide to decision-making. The arguments invoked in its favour as theory does not provide reasons to support it over other redistributive schemes. As guide to practical action, it runs counter to what empirical research reveals about how attitudes to economic inequality works in that people's acceptance of inequality adjusts: the more unequal a society is, the more inequality is accepted as fair. By disregarding inequalities below the riches-line as well as the economic system that produces them, limitarianism has no tools for countering this adjustment and risks legitimating a politics of inequality. Anyone who shares Robeyns' concerns about economic inequality have reason to be wary of limitarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If Machiavelli was a committed republican, as the dominant interpretations suggest, then why did he heap praise on an oligarchic creditor government that ran the city of Genoa in the fifteenth century? In the Florentine Histories , Machiavelli offers a curious encomium to a remarkable oligarchic institution in Genoa: the Bank of Saint George (Casa di San Giorgio). A creditor association and oldest chartered bank in the world, San Giorgio owned Genoa's public debt. In return for the credit it extended to the commune, the Casa exercised a striking degree of fiscal, judicial, political, and even military power. This politically unaccountable creditor government with its discretionary powers would seem to violate Machiavelli's commitments to institutionalized forms of sharing power. This article offers a sustained analysis and historical contextualization of Machiavelli's remarks about San Giorgio. Drawing on historical research on public debt in Renaissance Italy, I put forward a new hypothesis to explain Machiavelli's praise for the institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The link between democracy and within-country income inequality remains an unresolved quest in the literature of political economy. To look into this debate, I propose exploring the implications of electoral systems, rather than political regimes, on income inequality. I surmise that proportional representation systems should be associated with lower income inequality than majoritarian or mixed systems. Further, I conjecture that the relationship between electoral systems and income inequality hinges on the de facto distribution of real political power, namely political equality. I use data on 85 countries covering the period 1960–2016 and specify models able to capture the persistence and mean reversion of income inequality. The estimates fail to significantly associate democracy with income inequality, and find other political institutions to significantly shape income inequality. The paper finds a robust association between more proportional systems and lower income inequality. However, this association depends on political equality. Changes towards proportional representation systems seem to lower income inequality at low and medium levels of political equality. Strikingly, instrumental variable estimates show that changes in electoral systems in political equal societies increases income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interest group literature has long struggled with how to empirically approach the normative idea of a non-biased group system. While most previous attempts have focused on the descriptive representation of different types of groups, this article argues that substantive representation of citizens' attitudes is closer to the democratic principle of equal effective participation. It develops a methodological approach that captures substantive representation with respect to agenda priorities and policies by surveying interest groups on how much time they spend on lobbying in different policy areas, and in which direction they lobby on salient policy issues. The responses are compared with opinion data to estimate the level of political (in)equality. The findings from the case of Sweden – where relatively high levels of equality would be expected, but striking levels of inequality based on socio-economic status are instead found – highlight the perseverance of what Schattschneider once called the upper-class bias of the pressure system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Zeitschrift für Politik is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)