The Role of Preference Formation and Perception in Unequal Representation. Combined Evidence From Elite Interviews and Focus Groups in Germany

• Published date: 01 March 2025
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140241237470
• Author: Florian Fastenrath,Paul Marx
• Date: 01 March 2025

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2025, Vol. 58(3) 431–461

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140241237470

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The Role of Preference

Formation and

Perception in Unequal

Representation.

Combined Evidence

From Elite Interviews and

Focus Groups in

Germany

Florian Fastenrath

1,2

and Paul Marx

2

Abstract

Unequal representation can result from politicians’biased perception of

public opinion. Existing research has focused on the numerical accuracy with

which politicians estimate preferences distributions in surveys. This method

ignores politicians’broader assumptions about public preferences; e.g. re-

garding their crystallization, salience, malleability, and measurability in surveys.

We address these assumptions in a novel two-stage research design using

redistributive tax policy in Germany as a case. Interviews with parliamen-

tarians show that voters are perceived as uninformed, disinterested, and

susceptible to anti-tax mobilization by business representatives. Support for

taxing the rich in polls is dismissed as superf‌icial and irrelevant for political

behavior. In a second step, we verify these assumptions in twelve focus groups

with high- or low-educated citizens. They largely conf‌irm the assumed

1

University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

2

University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Florian Fastenrath, University of Bonn, Maximilianstr 22, Bonn 53113, Germany.

Email: f‌lorian.fastenrath@uni-bonn.de

Data Availability Statement included at the end of the article

indifference and anti-tax attitudes. An education gap in tax preferences cannot

be identif‌ied. Support expressed in previous surveys tends to disappear in

conversations, which aligns with politicians’experiences.

Keywords

elite interviews, focus groups, mixed-methods, political inequality,

representation and electoral systems

Introduction

This article contributes to the debate about the unequal political representation

of lower social classes in redistributive politics (Bartels, 2008;Burgoon et al.,

2022;Elkjær, 2020;Elkjær & Iversen, 2022;Els¨

asser & Sch¨

afer, 2023;Gilens

& Page, 2014;Lupu & Warner, 2022). Much research on this topic concludes

that lower- and (sometimes) middle-class citizens are less well represented by

government decisions than interests of the rich or corporations. Our

knowledge about the underlying reasons is, however, limited. As a contri-

bution to f‌illing this gap, we focus on a mechanism that might produce

unequal representation: politicians’perceptions of and assumptions about

public support for redistributive policies.

Most previous research has relied on the notions of elites’‘respon-

siveness’to or ‘congruence’with preferences in different social strata

(Burgoon et al., 2022). Both build on a fairly simple conception of rep-

resentation. At least implicitly, groups’preferences are assumed to be ex-

ogenous inputs, which policymakers receive as a signal that they attend to

more or less selectively and decide to respond to or ignore. A considerable

amount of research, to be reviewed in the following section, casts doubts on

the realism of this model. In practice, representation involves a great deal of

‘sense making’among representatives. This includes interpreting ambig-

uous, incomplete, or outright contradictory signals coming from their

constituency (Achen & Bartels, 2016;Henderson et al., 2023). It also means

developing persuasive political communication that allows them to mold

this noisy signal, in a contested political marketplace, into a foundation for

their policy projects (Druckman & Jacobs, 2015;Fairf‌ield, 2013;Huber &

Stephens, 2012;Slothuus & Bisgaard, 2021). Such interpretative work is

done under conditions of uncertainty (Baumgartner et al., 2011;Kingdon,

1995). What the public wants, how it can be convinced of a policy, and

which strategy competitors will pursue are unknowns. Our core interest in

this paper is how politicians deal with such uncertainties when engaging

with public opinion –and how this might contribute to political inequality in

redistributive politics.

432 Comparative Political Studies 58(3)