Local Government: Composition and Consequences
The identity of political leaders affects which policies get selected, how well they are implemented, and who benefits from them. While this is intuitive for autocracies, in which rulers face few constraints, it is also true for representative democracies, because policy platforms do not constitute completely enforceable contracts. Most voters would therefore like to elect highly competent policy makers who will choose and implement policies. As a collective, voters also want to elect policy makers who represent diverse interests, so that government will pursue broad objectives.
In this project we will study Swedish local governments to examine the broad questions of if, when, and how we can get policy makers who are both competent and representative of voters as a group. We will also contribute to better understanding the consequences of electing, or selecting, policy makers with certain characteristics. To achieve these aims we will use the world's most detailed and comprehensive data set on politicians and bureaucrats, which covers the entire Swedish population for over 35 years.
The project involves three types of contributions. First, following a recent trend in economics, we will provide a thick description of the process of selection into occupations and powerful positions. Second, we will conduct causal tests of existing theories about the nature of these patterns and extend the current. Third, we will study the impacts of selection on various policy outcomes.
In this project we will study Swedish local governments to examine the broad questions of if, when, and how we can get policy makers who are both competent and representative of voters as a group. We will also contribute to better understanding the consequences of electing, or selecting, policy makers with certain characteristics. To achieve these aims we will use the world's most detailed and comprehensive data set on politicians and bureaucrats, which covers the entire Swedish population for over 35 years.
The project involves three types of contributions. First, following a recent trend in economics, we will provide a thick description of the process of selection into occupations and powerful positions. Second, we will conduct causal tests of existing theories about the nature of these patterns and extend the current. Third, we will study the impacts of selection on various policy outcomes.
Final report
TThe broad aim of this project was to study the selection of policy makers to answer several questions about how governments function. We wanted to study synergies and tradeoffs between competence and social representativeness. We also wanted to understand the consequences of electing, or selecting, policy makers with certain characteristics. The broader project had three subprojects studying:
1. Politicians’ competence and socioeconomic representativeness
2. Gender, family constraints, and political representation
3. Geographic political representation
The project was largely executed according to the initial plans, but there were also some changes and additions. The project’s descriptive results were well-received, so we continued that descriptive track a bit more than initially intended. Some other parts of the planned analysis had to be abandoned due to being statistically underpowered.
The first key results from the project are reported in the paper “Who Becomes a Politicians”. We show that Sweden has what we coined an “Inclusive Meritocracy”. Politicians are of higher ability than the average citizen and are also representative of the full national population with respect to parental socioeconomic background.
The second key result comes from the paper “Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders“, which nuances the first key results. In this paper we show the traditional Swedish parties severely underrepresent economic and social outsiders, but that the growth of the Sweden Democrats has provided descriptive political representations of those groups. We argue that this a key factor behind their success of that party over the last 15 years.
The third key results deals with the different tradeoffs that men and women face between family and career. In the paper “All the Single Ladies” we show that becoming a Parliamentarian, or a Mayor (chair of the municipal board), doubles women’s probability of divorce, but does not affect men’s divorce probability. Women’s divorces are concentrated to gender traditional couples, which shows the incompatibility between gender equality in the labor market and traditional marriage patterns.
As bonus results, outside of the three we were asked to provide, I want to highlight the results from “Politicians' Neighborhoods”. In this paper we show that municipal politicians live in socio-economically privileged neighborhoods and that they shield these neighborhoods from school closures and the construction of multifamily homes. This highlights the fact that who represents us in our local government matters for political decisions.
Broadly speaking, the results in this project paints a very positive picture of political representation in Sweden, highlighting the fact that Sweden has highly functioning selection of politicians even when voters have little direct influence of said selection. At the same time, there are still groups that are marginalized in politics and face particular challenges in climbing the political hierarchy. From this perspective, the project highlights aspects of the Swedish democratic system that Swedish political parties can be very proud of, but also shows important areas with remaining challenges.
An important contribution of the project is to spearhead a new approach of studying political representation in population-wide administrative data. In a recent review article by Gulzar (2021, Annual Review of Political Science) on “Who enters politics, and why?” a full section is devoted to papers using the approach first implemented in “Who Becomes a Politician”. From this perspective, the project has laid the ground for a new strand of research in the broader discipline(s).
The project members have been very active in dissemination the work of the project at conferences and seminar series at world leading research universities. The papers mentioned above have been presented at universities such as Stanford, Yale, LSE, Princeton, UCL, Tinbergen, Berkeley, Columbia, Rice University, Texas A&M, and Hebrew University. Members of the project have presented the papers at conferences such as the NBER Summer Institute, APSA, IIPF, MPSA, and SOIE. The papers have been well-received at these events and received several awards. “Single Ladies” won the "Peggy and Richard Musgrave Prize” for the best paper presented by someone under the age of 40 and the IIPF 2018. “Party Nomination Strategies“ won the "CQ Press Award" for the best paper on legislative studies presented at APSA 2018 and “Rise of the Radical Right” won the award for best paper presented at the 2018 SOIE conference. In addition, the work has been presented an invitation-only conferences at, for example, the University of Chicago, Michigan State University, Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard.
All papers in this projects are available with easy access for the public. The published versions are all available through the authors’ homepages, google scholar and Researchgate. We have also been very active in disseminating the results to the public. Perhaps most importantly, we have written popular science descriptions/summaries in both Swedish and English for nearly all papers, includeing two articles in “Ekonomisk Debatt”. When releasing the working paper about the Rise of the Sweden Democrats we wrote an open-ed for “DN Debatt” that received substantial public attention. In English, we have written popular science blog post for “Who Becomes a Politicians”, “Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders“, and “All the Single Ladies”. The research from the project has received extensive media coverage and has been featured in New York Times, DN, Fortune, Slate, Forskning och Framsteg, the Atlantic, DN, TV 4, Nada Es Gratis, Zetland, SVD, Dagens Arena, Medium, and Swedish Public Radio and Television.
The success of project has led to secured continued funding to pursue the broad research agenda, primarily through Olle Folke receiving a consolidation grant from the Swedish Research Council. Within that ongoing extension, we are currently adding about 8 years of administrative data, greatly increasing our statistical power, which will allow us to hopefully study the questions that we were not able to study within this project.
1. Politicians’ competence and socioeconomic representativeness
2. Gender, family constraints, and political representation
3. Geographic political representation
The project was largely executed according to the initial plans, but there were also some changes and additions. The project’s descriptive results were well-received, so we continued that descriptive track a bit more than initially intended. Some other parts of the planned analysis had to be abandoned due to being statistically underpowered.
The first key results from the project are reported in the paper “Who Becomes a Politicians”. We show that Sweden has what we coined an “Inclusive Meritocracy”. Politicians are of higher ability than the average citizen and are also representative of the full national population with respect to parental socioeconomic background.
The second key result comes from the paper “Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders“, which nuances the first key results. In this paper we show the traditional Swedish parties severely underrepresent economic and social outsiders, but that the growth of the Sweden Democrats has provided descriptive political representations of those groups. We argue that this a key factor behind their success of that party over the last 15 years.
The third key results deals with the different tradeoffs that men and women face between family and career. In the paper “All the Single Ladies” we show that becoming a Parliamentarian, or a Mayor (chair of the municipal board), doubles women’s probability of divorce, but does not affect men’s divorce probability. Women’s divorces are concentrated to gender traditional couples, which shows the incompatibility between gender equality in the labor market and traditional marriage patterns.
As bonus results, outside of the three we were asked to provide, I want to highlight the results from “Politicians' Neighborhoods”. In this paper we show that municipal politicians live in socio-economically privileged neighborhoods and that they shield these neighborhoods from school closures and the construction of multifamily homes. This highlights the fact that who represents us in our local government matters for political decisions.
Broadly speaking, the results in this project paints a very positive picture of political representation in Sweden, highlighting the fact that Sweden has highly functioning selection of politicians even when voters have little direct influence of said selection. At the same time, there are still groups that are marginalized in politics and face particular challenges in climbing the political hierarchy. From this perspective, the project highlights aspects of the Swedish democratic system that Swedish political parties can be very proud of, but also shows important areas with remaining challenges.
An important contribution of the project is to spearhead a new approach of studying political representation in population-wide administrative data. In a recent review article by Gulzar (2021, Annual Review of Political Science) on “Who enters politics, and why?” a full section is devoted to papers using the approach first implemented in “Who Becomes a Politician”. From this perspective, the project has laid the ground for a new strand of research in the broader discipline(s).
The project members have been very active in dissemination the work of the project at conferences and seminar series at world leading research universities. The papers mentioned above have been presented at universities such as Stanford, Yale, LSE, Princeton, UCL, Tinbergen, Berkeley, Columbia, Rice University, Texas A&M, and Hebrew University. Members of the project have presented the papers at conferences such as the NBER Summer Institute, APSA, IIPF, MPSA, and SOIE. The papers have been well-received at these events and received several awards. “Single Ladies” won the "Peggy and Richard Musgrave Prize” for the best paper presented by someone under the age of 40 and the IIPF 2018. “Party Nomination Strategies“ won the "CQ Press Award" for the best paper on legislative studies presented at APSA 2018 and “Rise of the Radical Right” won the award for best paper presented at the 2018 SOIE conference. In addition, the work has been presented an invitation-only conferences at, for example, the University of Chicago, Michigan State University, Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard.
All papers in this projects are available with easy access for the public. The published versions are all available through the authors’ homepages, google scholar and Researchgate. We have also been very active in disseminating the results to the public. Perhaps most importantly, we have written popular science descriptions/summaries in both Swedish and English for nearly all papers, includeing two articles in “Ekonomisk Debatt”. When releasing the working paper about the Rise of the Sweden Democrats we wrote an open-ed for “DN Debatt” that received substantial public attention. In English, we have written popular science blog post for “Who Becomes a Politicians”, “Economic and Social Outsiders but Political Insiders“, and “All the Single Ladies”. The research from the project has received extensive media coverage and has been featured in New York Times, DN, Fortune, Slate, Forskning och Framsteg, the Atlantic, DN, TV 4, Nada Es Gratis, Zetland, SVD, Dagens Arena, Medium, and Swedish Public Radio and Television.
The success of project has led to secured continued funding to pursue the broad research agenda, primarily through Olle Folke receiving a consolidation grant from the Swedish Research Council. Within that ongoing extension, we are currently adding about 8 years of administrative data, greatly increasing our statistical power, which will allow us to hopefully study the questions that we were not able to study within this project.