Inequality in the ‘Conflict of Conflicts’? The Impact of Citizen Sophistication on Agenda-setting Effects

Rune Stubager

Political Studies, 2015, vol. 63, issue 4, 793-813

Abstract: type="main">

Influence upon the societal agenda is an important power resource in modern democracies. Consequently, inequalities in such influence across different segments of the public have important democratic implications. Using time-series methods on a unique Danish dataset, this article investigates the existence of inequalities in agenda power across groups with different levels of political sophistication and finds that the most sophisticated members of the public possess more such power vis-à-vis the media and politicians than the less sophisticated. The existence of inequalities in agenda power across different segments of the public, even in the homogenous Danish society, implies that countries characterised by higher levels of inequality should experience even larger disparities, thereby jeopardising the democratic principle that all citizens have equal access to placing issues on the agenda.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1467-9248.12131 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:polstu:v:63:y:2015:i:4:p:793-813

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0032-3217

Access Statistics for this article

Political Studies is currently edited by Matthew Festenstein and Martin Smith

More articles in Political Studies from Political Studies Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().