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Replication Data for: "Inclusive Meritocracy: Ability and Descriptive Representation among Danish Politicians"

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: "Inclusive Meritocracy: Ability and Descriptive Representation among Danish Politicians"
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/H69OCL
 
Creator Dahlgaard, Jens Olav
Pedersen, Rasmus T.
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Can democracies attract and elect politicians that are both high-ability and from diverse backgrounds? Using data covering the entire Danish population, including every candidate for local and national elections in 1990-2015, we explore the selection of political candidates. We show that Danish candidates and elected politicians have higher ability than the voters they represent, that selection on ability reflects individual skills rather than social background, that politicians are selected from economically diverse backgrounds, and that there is no substantial trade-off between ability and representation. Furthermore, we utilize a major structural reform, which significantly reduced the number of municipalities in Denmark, to show that increased political competition did not affect politicians’ ability, economic background or the trade-off between the two.
 
Subject Social Sciences
 
Date 2024-02-28
 
Contributor Pedersen, Rasmus T.