@jesperlindqvist
Post-doctoral researcher, Lund University. Researching representation, participation, cleavage and left-right politics. Currently working on the project "Political Party Competition and the Transnational Cleavage in Europe" together with Jonathan Polk.
Why does mainstream accommodation of far-right and Eurosceptic parties often electorally backfire? In my 3rd dissertation paper, just published in @wepsocial.bsky.social, I argue that voters specifically punish internally divided parties for accommodation: doi.org/10.1080/0140...
1/13 🧵
‼️ New paper out in @polbehavior.bsky.social !
We ask whether the politically active (in terms of electoral or other forms of participation) are better represented? See Jesper's detailed 🧵 below for more info on the paper! 👇
Thanks David!
For funding, we thank the European Union (ERC, PRD, project number 101077659) @erc.europa.eu, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Sweden, P20-0359 @riksjubileumsfond.bsky.social, and Lund University for Open Access Funding.
...Peter Esaiasson, Jacob Gunderson @jacobgunderson.bsky.social, Swen Hutter @swenhutter.bsky.social, Noam Lupu @noamlupu.bsky.social, Elias Markstedt, Aya Shoshan @ashoshan.bsky.social, Matthew Simonson, Maria Tyrberg, and Barak Zur.
Thanks also to colleagues for their insights and encouragement as we advanced this research, with official article acknowledgement to Jeremy Albright, Letícia Barbabela @letmeni.bsky.social, Martin Bisgaard, Endre Borbáth @eborbath.bsky.social, Francisca Castro @fcastrog.bsky.social...
Big thanks to the Editors-in-Chief Chris Karpowitz @profkarpo.bsky.social and Jessica Preece @jrpjrpjrp.bsky.social and POBE anonymous reviewers whose insightful comments guided an intellectually meaningful and enjoyable review process.
(1) We show that those who are politically active through nonelectoral activity are better represented, even when accounting for leading alternate explanations.
(2) We lay the groundwork for future research to identify causal mechanisms linking participation and representation.
We tested whether socio-economic status or political attitudes can explain the observed relationship. Our findings show that the relationship between participation and subsequent representation holds even when accounting for these factors.
Our paper makes two important contributions to the field:
These results establish a clear and meaningful correlation, but cannot identify whether nonelectoral participation *causes* better representation. To assess whether there might be a causal link, we examined whether alternative explanations can account for the observed relationship.
We find that voters are slightly, but not substantially better represented than non-voters. In contrast, people active in multiple forms of nonelectoral participation (like demonstrations, petitions, contacting officials) are better represented.
We analyze data from 40 countries and over 270,000 survey respondents (1996–2016), linking people’s policy preferences with actual policy implementation five years later. To analyze participation, we assess both electoral and nonelectoral channels of influence.
We ask an important question: Are people who are politically active better represented than those who are inactive? We analyze cross-national data connecting people’s opinions with subsequent measures of representation to answer this question.
🧵I am happy to announce a new article in Political Behavior @polbehavior.bsky.social, “Are the Politically Active Better Represented?”, co-authored with @jenny-oser.bsky.social, @rdassonneville.bsky.social, @professormpersson.bsky.social, and Anders Sundell.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
BJPolS abstract of a scholarly article discussing the influence of social group perceptions on political behavior, voter evaluations, and identity-based choices in Denmark.
NEW -
How Are Social Groups Linked to the Vote? Social Group Perceptions and Party Choice - https://cup.org/4ohzoJP
"the first to show experimental evidence for the effect of group evaluations on vote choice"
- Rune Stubager
#OpenAccess
I have only seen such a paper at a conference. The finding was that younger people tend to get more of their preferred policies (if I remembered correctly). Perhaps it was only the preliminarily finding. Haven't seen the paper published yet.
ecpr.eu/Events/Event...
Our study thus speaks against the "electoral explanation" of unequal opinion-policy congruence. @annakurella.bsky.social @nathaliegiger.bsky.social and @janrosset.bsky.social found evidence pointing in a similar direction in an interesting study last year: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Happy to see our study out! Our main takeaway is that while poor voters vote less often, are less ideologically aligned with their preferred party, and see their preferred party less often in government - voting still does not seem to explain unequal representation.
Somehow, it's already time for #APSA2025! Presenting the newest version of my paper w @jenny-oser.bsky.social + @jesperlindqvist.bsky.social on political participation and politicians' perceptions of public opinion.
Happy to meet during the conference, so please reach out!
@apsa.bsky.social
EPSA have announced that they will hold a conference in July 2026.
😵💫 We understand that there might be some confusion about EPSS and EPSA.
👉🏽 So we thought we would clarify some things.
A short 🧵
I'm presenting work w the amazing @jenny-oser.bsky.social and @jesperlindqvist.bsky.social at #EPSA2025 on Thursday.
We combine 40 years of parallel surveys among citizens/MPs + a survey experiment w Swedish politicians on participation and public opinion
Come and say hi - always happy to meet!
Very interesting paper about the left-right dimension!
Skrev en debattartikel i SvD om vänster-höger-skalan: www.svd.se/a/lwjdXM/syn...
Great to see this finally out! It's an interesting paper because we examine whether unequal representation is caused by how low- and high-income people vote (for example ideological voting). Our findings goes against this idea, meaning that unequal representation must be caused by something else!
New working paper!
How do protesters' demographics and policy preferences affect politicians' responsiveness to their demands? I find no effects of shared demographics btw. protesters and politicians, but asymmetric responsiveness to left-right policy preferences: gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/...
No worries, thank you for sharing yours! :)
I agree!
I should say that this seems likely to be the case. Unfortunately, it is not really possible to control for everything, and I don’t think that an experimental setting can solve this problem.
I think that you are correct to point out that the relationship between variables at the individual level is never one-to-one. In that sense, it is possible that if we could control for every other possible factor, then left-wing individuals would always be at least slightly more egalitarian.
The example you bring up is exactly what I am talking about. It’s important to consider because when individuals vote for the Left, they often take on the left-wing label, no matter the reason for why they voted for the Left.