Acting in the Interest of the Represented : A Field Experiment on Ethnic Discrimination in the Contact Between Citizens and Local Swedish Politicians

Sammanfattning: This thesis presents a field experiment on the topic of ethnic discrimination in the contact between citizens and local Swedish politicians. A correspondence technique was used to investigate whether ethnicity affects how responsive Municipal Commissioners are to questions regarding school politics. By sending an email to each Municipal Commissioner, randomising whether a putative Arabic or Swedish alias was used, it aimed to find potentialpatterns in how different groups of citizens are treated by their local political representatives. In total, eight fictitious individuals were created which each contained a unique mixture of ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status. In general, the result shows no statistically significant signs of discrimination of individuals with Arabic-sounding names. Evidence of gender disparities among Arabic individuals was neither found. However, Arabic females are significantly less likely to receive a reply than Swedish females. Furthermore, the result indicates that socioeconomic status affects political responsiveness toward individuals with Arabic background. This should be considered problematic and noteworthy in the case of Sweden, given its reputation of being a highly egalitarian and well-functioning democracy. The findings further stress the importance to acknowledge that different categories of social identities may interact with ethnic discrimination. This consequently calls upon appropriate approaches to study it.