Leah Elsässer at the PPE Colloquium

(N)one of us? Causes and implications of class inequalities in parliament
Legislators across the world have always come from more privileged backgrounds than the average citizen, but the class composition of parliaments has become even more homogeneous over the past decades: While the share of parliamentarians from working-class backgrounds is shrinking, we see a parallel rise of highly educated "career politicians"; with little occupational experience outside politics. Inequality scholars have pointed to the implications of these developments for representational inequality, but we still know little about its causes. Based on evidence from Germany, this talk addresses three interrelated questions: How has the social composition of parliament changed over time? Why does the descriptive (mis-)representation matter for redistributive politics and unequal policy responsiveness? And how can we explain these changes in the social compositions of parliaments?

Bio: Lea Elsässer is currently postdoctoral researcher at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. With the start of the summer term she transitions to the Goethe University Frankfurt where she will start a position as Assistant Professor of Comparative European Politics. Her research focuses on the relationship between socio-economic inequality, political representation, and redistributive politics.