LISS panel Grant 2023. Authors: Vivian Visser, Willem de Koster, Jeroen van der Waal (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam – Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences).
Inspired by the literature on ‘diploma democracies’, indicating that the overrepresentation of higher socioeconomic status (SES) politicians reduces lower SES citizens’ political trust and voter turn-out, we want to study the effect of civil servants’ SES background on how citizens relate to both civil servants and local governments. Given that today’s bureaucratic organisations are dominated by higher SES professionals, we use a pre-registered population-based vignette survey experiment to test whether (in)congruence between civil servants’ and citizens’ SES affects how citizens relate to civil servants local governments. We expect that when there is a congruence between civil servants’ and citizens’ SES, citizens a) perceive more cultural proximity between themselves and civil servants, b) have more trust in civil servants and the local government, and c) are more willing to participate with civil servants and the local government. Our study therewith crucially advances our understanding of democratic (non-)participation, and provides a starting point for tackling the unwanted underrepresentation in all forms of participatory democracy of citizens with a lower SES.