Martin Rosema Bas Denters Kees Aarts-How Democracy Works Political Representation and Policy Congruence in Modern Societies-Amsterdam University Press(2011)

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Democracy

Political Representation andPolicy Congruence in Modern Societies

Edited by Martin Rosema, Bas Denters

and Kees Aarts


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How Democracy Works


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Political Representation andPolicy Congruence in Modern Societies

Essays in Honour of Jacques Thomassen

Edited by Martin Rosema, Bas Dentersand Kees Aarts

how

works

Democracy


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Cover design and layout: Maedium, Utrecht

ISBN 978 90 8555 036 5e-ISBN 978 90 4851 336 9N 754

Martin Rosema, as Denters and Kees Aarts /Pallas Publications Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2011

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may e reproduced, sored in or inroduced ino a rerieval sysem, or ransmied, in any form or

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Table of Contents

Preface/7

1 HowDemocracyWorks:AnIntroduction/9

Martin Rosema, Kees Aarts and Bas Denters

I T B p: p

2 TeDynamicsofPoliticalRepresentation/21

Russell J. Dalton, David M. Farrell and Ian McAllister

3 ApproachingPerfectPolicyCongruence:Measurement,Development,andRelevanceforPoliticalRepresentation/39

Rudy B. Andeweg

4 DynamicRepresentationfromAbove/53

Sren Holmberg

5 IsGoverningBecomingmoreContentious?/77

Peter Mair

II T z p

6 DemocraticCongruenceRe-Established:TePerspectiveofSubstantive

Democracy/89Christian Welzel and Hans-Dieter Klingemann

7 DoesDemocraticSatisfactionReectRegimePerformance?/115

Pippa Norris8 CitizensViewsaboutGoodLocalGovernance/137

Bas Denters, Oscar Gabriel and Lawrence E. Rose


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9 PatternsofPartyEvaluations/159

Kees Aarts and Bernt Aardal

III p Ep

10 TeElectoralConsequencesofLowurnoutinEuropeanParliamentElections/183

Cees van der Eijk, Hermann Schmitt and Eliyahu V. Sapir

11 AssessingtheQualityofEuropeanDemocracy:AreVotersVoting

Correctly?/199

Martin Rosema and Catherine E. de Vries

IV T Ip f E x

12 TeImpactoftheEconomicCrisisinEurope:Imdoingne/223

Jan W. van Deth

13 TeChangingMacroContextofNorwegianVoters:FromCenter-

PeripheryCleavagestoOilWealth/239

Ola Listhaug and Hanne Marthe Narud

ListofContributors/257

Appendix:PublicationsbyJacquesTomassen/261

References/269


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Preface

ere are many good reasons to resent a book on the unctioning o reresenta-tive democracy at this recise moment. ut the true reason or its creation is asecial event o a ersonal nature: the ormal retirement o Jacques omassen

at the University o wente. n his long and imressive academic career Jacquesomassen has greatly contributed to the study o democracy. He has authoredand edited several inuential academic works, which already started with one ohis rst articles in 1976, entitled Party identication as a cross-national concet,which is still considered to be a classic in the literature on voting behavior. Hisublications since include many books in both Dutch and nglish, oten ublishedby the leading academic ublishers in olitical science. His reutation as an editoro books is almost unrivalled in olitical science. ut there is much more. Jacques

omassen has layed a vital role in the develoment o major national and inter-national data collection rojects about olitical institutions, such as the Dutch Par-liamentary Election Studies, Dutch Parliament Studies, Comparative Study of ElectoralSystems and the European Election Studies. e data that are still generated on thebasis o these collaborative rojects rovide a most valuable source o inormationor the study o democracy without it researchers would arguably not be able toadequately study the unctioning o democracy and thus orm one o the mostimortant develoments in the last decades in olitical science.

is Liber Amicorum serves to honour Jacques omassen or his etremely

valuable contribution to the study o democracy. n his career he has collaboratedwith doens o academics rom many countries. ey have learned to know Jacquesomassen as a most cometent and erudite scholar and a good colleague; andmany enjoy the rivilege o being amongst the many riends that he has madeover these years. is volume is a collection o essays by some o these colleaguesand riends. n lanning this volume, we had to be very restrictive, and as a resultmany colleagues who would have liked to contribute to this book could not betaken on board. e nal set o essays demonstrate the areciation o the authors

or Jacques omassen by bringing together in this volume some o their very bestand resh work on the theme that has been at the heart o his research agenda: theunctioning o reresentative democracy. ogether, these contributions rovide themost u-to-date assessment o how democracy works in the world o today. econtributions in this volume have been created in the sirit o Jacques omassens


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work. We hoe that, together, they testiy to the imortance o Jacques work aswell as more generally to the need or theory-based, large-scale, international andlongitudinal research in olitical science.

e lanning and roduction o this book have taken lace in a remarkably shorteriod o time. We would like to etend our warmest areciation to the ersonswho have made this ossible and we would like to mention some elicitly. First oall, the authors who have contributed to this book have all adhered to the etremelystrict deadlines that we imosed. We are very grateul or their cooeration. We alsoetend our thanks to rik van Aert and his colleagues at Amsterdam UniversityPress or the smooth cooeration in bringing these essays to the resses. We arealso grateul to Marcia Cliord and Marloes annings or their valuable assistancein rearing the tables and bibliograhy. ast but not least, Janine van der Woude,our (and Jacques) wonderul secretary at the Deartment o Political cience and

Research Methods, succeeded in transorming each o the contributions into a con-sistent ormat and a roer book chater under the ressure o time and secrecy.

Martin Rosema, Bas Denters and Kees AartsEnschede, August 2010


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How Democracy Works

An Inroducion

Martin Rosema, Kees Aarts and Bas Denters

1.1 Introduction

O f T related more than once, and which is thereore robably o some signicance, isabout how his 1976 dissertation Kiezers en gekozenen in een representatieve demokratiewas received. e dissertation reorted on the rst true reresentation study con-

ducted in the etherlands, consisting o surveys among the members o arliamentas well as among a samle rom the Dutch electorate. t was art o a larger, inter-national research eort that involved researchers rom the United tates, Germany,weden, France, taly and the etherlands. Many o these count among the toolitical scientists o the last decades.

e dissertation contained several remarkable results. Members o arliamentaeared to have dierent olicy views than their own voters. otably, the rere-sentatives o let-wing arties were quite out o touch with their voters on law-and-order tyes o issues. e Dutch ress showed a great interest in these results, and

the dissertation romised to attract a great deal o coverage. en a government-aointed committee ublished its long-eected reort on the alleged corrutionand bribing aair involving airlane construction rms and Prince ernard, theDutch rince consort. Within hours, the media attention shited comletely to thereort, and attention or omassens dissertation dwindled.

e story shows how the results o meticulous, time-consuming emiricalresearch do not easily make the headlines the news o the day is more attrac-tive or the mass media. At the same time, serious research is indisensable or

understanding and araising the develoments in everyday olitics. t rovides therames or understanding the news, and oers ossibilities or comaring the eventso here and today with those in other countries or in the ast. Without an ideaabout the divergence o mass and elite oinions, how could one have understood

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the outburst o oular suort or Prince ernard at the annual ceremony o theoening o the arliamentary year in 1976?

Mass-elite relationshis, in articular the democratic orms o these, and ublicoinion have been at the ocus o omassens research since his earliest ublica-tions. e otential conict between undamental values o democracy is one o hisconstant concerns. Democracy can be regarded as an eort to reconcile the oten-tially conicting values o liberty and equality. o make democracy work, we rstneed a clear view o the ossible meanings o these values. What elements o libertyand equality constitute democracy, and how should democratic olitical systemsunction? wo equally imortant questions that ollow are about how democraticsystems work in reality, and which changes occur in that resect as a result o majorsocietal develoments like individualiation, globaliation and uroean unica-tion. When the answers to all these questions are conronted, conclusions about the

quality o democracy can be drawn: to what etent do olitical systems live u tothe ideals?

is, in a nutshell, is the research rogram that has guided Jacques omassenthroughout his academic career. During the ast 40 years, it has not lost any oits relevance. n 2010, evaluating the unctioning o democracy is even more rel-evant than ever, because o imortant changes in society that rovide challengesto democracy. t seems thereore tting to dedicate this book, which aears at theoccasion o Jacques 65 anniversary, to the unctioning o modern democracies in

the light o the main rinciles o reresentative democracy. e analyses to ollow,which are based on recent data rom a range o authoritative international researchrojects, lead to resh insights about how democracy works in the comle world otoday.

e underlying rationale or resenting the resent volume can also artly beound in undamental changes in society in the last decades, as well as their oliti-cal systems, which have an imact on how democracy can and will unction. esechanges include the weakening o traditional cleavages like religion and social class,the increased relevance o multi-level governance, and the ersonaliation o oli-

tics. n addition, one can also think o the establishment o new democracies inastern uroe, the weakened ties between olitical arties and citiens, and theincreasingly critical attitude o the ublic. Add to this the recent economic andnancial crisis, and it is clear that there is sucient ground or an in-deth analysiso how democracy works in this changed contet.

ese changes in society are the background o this volume, but it is imortantto note that thinking about the normative oundations o democracy has develoedas well. For eamle, the notion o deliberation, which can be traced back to the

direct democracy in ancient Greece, has been added to the list o elements thatcharacteries the ideal o democracy. Also the notion o (government) account-ability has gained a more central osition. ut at the same time much has remainedas it was. ere are still oosing views on the etent to which citiens should layan active role in olitics ranging rom the elitist view o limited citien articia-


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tion to the advocates o articiatory democracy. Moreover, the new theoreticaldebates and democratic ractices have not really altered the mainstream view owhat constitutes the essence o modern democracy. ince the transormation ocity-states to nation-states, the most essential eature o democracy has been that oolitical reresentation. e question is how such reresentation takes lace in thecomle world o multi-level governance. And the classic idea that the ultimate aimo democracy is to establish government olicy that reects the reerences o itscitiens, has also remained airly uncontested and drives research about democracy.Hence, the two basic rinciles that are still at the heart o democracy are oliticalreresentation and olicy congruence. ese rinciles also guide most o the workin this volume, which thus rovides an assessment o the unctioning o moderndemocracies in the light o these classic concets.

e essays not only constitute an intellectual tribute to Jacques omassen. ey

also bring together several o the main threads that characterie his work. n termso his aroach Jacques omassens work is characteried by a number o ele-ments, which thus also characterie this volume. e rst guiding rincile is a rmconnection between normative democratic theory and rigorous emirical research.ither normative theory is used as the ramework or deriving rinciles to evaluatedemocratic ractices with the hel o systematic emirical research, or the res-entation o emirical analyses is ollowed by a discussion o the imlications othe major research ndings or the democratic legitimacy o the system. econd,

in many instances Jacques omassens work builds on the results o internationalcomarative studies. is is not surrising i we consider the rominent ositionthat he has occuied in many national as well as international rojects in the eld.e contributions resented in this volume make etensive use o these nationaland international research rojects. e third element is a ocus on multile levelso government. Although initially Jacques omassens work was redominantlyoriented towards issues o reresentation and articiation at the national level, hehas since then made major contributions to the study o articiation and reresen-tation at the local level and at the level o the uroean Union. n this volume, too,

all levels o government are aid attention to and some chaters are ully devotedto the unctioning o democracy in the uroean Union.

1.2 The basic principles: political representationand policy congruence

e contributions to this volume are organied in our arts. e rst art ocuses on

two basic rinciles o democracy in modern societies, which have also been centralin the work o Jacques omassen: olitical reresentation and olicy congruence(e.g. omassen 1976, 1991, 2005; omassen, an chendelen and ielonka-Goei1992; omassen and chmitt 1997; Miller et al. 1999). Although there are manydierent visions o democracy (see e.g. Held 2006), there aears to be a consider-


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able amount o agreement on these key elements. n large-scale societies a systemo olitical reresentation is unavoidable and orms the heart o the democraticsystem. ndeed, even the minimalist denitions o democracy, such as the amousone by chumeter, ut the idea o elected reresentatives central. is is not to saythat there is not much more. ndeed, Dahl (1989), or eamle, described a amousset o characteristics that are also crucial or a well unctioning democratic system,such as reedom o seech and reedom o association. ut the selection o oliticalreresentatives by citiens in ree and air elections, in combination with universalsurage, arguably remains the most essential eature o modern democracy. Fur-thermore, many agree on the urose o olitical reresentation through electionsand dene it in terms o resonsiveness or olicy congruence (see e.g. Powell 2000).is means that olicy reerences o citiens are reected in olicies adoted bythe government. e etent to which olicy congruence between citiens and their

reresentatives eists, or with actual government olicy, thus becomes an imortantindicator o democratic quality (Diamond and Morlino 2005).

e our contributions in Part all deal with the rinciles o olitical reresen-tation and olicy congruence and eand our understanding o both. n Chater2, Russell Dalton, David Farrell and an McAllister sketch the develoment othe study o olitical reresentation and argue that most studies have aroachedolitical reresentation as a discrete choice rocess. Policy reerences or ideologi-cal ositions o citiens are tyically comared with those o their reresentatives at

a articular oint in time. Dalton et al. roose an alternative aroach that consid-ers olitical reresentation more like a steering rocess in which government olicyis adjusted rom one election to the net. ey test their ideas on the basis o dataon elections in 35 nations rom the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Moresecically, they eamine i ost-election olicy congruence between citiens andgovernment in terms o let-right is greater than re-election olicy congruence, astheir model suggests. e ndings suort their hyothesis and this leads Daltonet al. to conclude that the overall health o reresentative democracy is good.

n Chater 3, Rudy Andeweg also reaches a ositive conclusion about the unc-

tioning o olitical reresentation while ocusing on the etherlands. Andewegdiscusses ast research on olicy congruence and observes that the commonaroach has been to eamine i olicy reerences o individual voters match ol-icy reerences o the arties they voted or. Andeweg argues that what mattersmore or democracy, is whether olicy reerences o arliament as a whole reectthose o the electorate as a whole and hence olicy congruence should be studied atthe aggregate level. n the basis o novel measures he analyes olicy congruencebetween arliament and the electorate using the elite and mass surveys o the Dutch

Parliament Studies and Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies. e quality o rere-sentation aears to have increased substantially and gradually increased rom 55 to60 er cent in the 1970s to 89 er cent in 2006. is eeds otimistic eelings aboutthe health o democracy, but Andeweg also gives a warning sign: citiens trust in


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democracy has not increased accordingly and hence whether olicy congruence isthe best indicator or the health o a democracy is debatable.

ren Holmberg returns to the theme o olitical reresentation in Chater 4and analyes the dynamics o mass and elite ublic oinion. e key question headdresses is whether oinion ormation is dominated by olitical elites (to-down)or by citiens (bottom-u). He utilies mass and elite survey data rom weden ona wide range o olicy issues across eight dierent elections since the late 1960s.Holmberg concludes that there is a considerable amount o overla between shitsin oinion at the mass and elite level, and that most requently elected reresenta-tives lead their voters and not the other way around. Democratic leadershi turnsout to be more than ollowing the oinion o the electorate; it also involves shaingublic oinion.

e nal contribution in Part is by Peter Mair, who in Chater 5 asks the ques-

tion i in modern democracies olicy congruence is still central. t oten seems thatvoters have become more concerned about the rocess o governing rather than thestands o olitical arties on the issues. Put briey, the unction o (government)accountability seems to have become more central than the unction o reresenta-tion (by arties). uilding on these ideas, Mair develos three hyotheses aboutthe nature o vote shits in arliamentary elections. He tests these on the basis oaggregate level data on election outcomes in ourteen West uroean countriesacross the last ve decades o the twentieth century. Mair observes that the divide

between government and oosition has become more inuential. However, in thesame eriod volatility as such has also increased and hence the relative imortanceo incumbency has not changed. o government accountability has not becomethe dominant eature o electoral olitics. is means that olitical reresentationremains as imortant as it has been.

1.3 Citizens judgements of democraticgovernance and political parties

n Part II o this book we shit our attention to citiens suort or democracy, atheme that has also eatured rominently in the work o Jacques omassen (e.g.omassen 1991, 2007; Aarts and omassen 2008; omassen and an der Kolk2009). n Chater 6, Christian Welel and Hans-Dieter Klingemann emhasiethe imortance o suort or democratic values. Welel and Klingemann arguethat the stability o democratic regimes deends on the etent to which they satisytheir citiens demand or democracy. imilarly, authoritarian regimes will be more

stable i citiens demand or democracy is weak. e authors reer to this matchbetween demand and suly o democracy by the notion o democratic congruence.ey urther argue that what matters is how democracy is eectively resected atthe suly side and intrinsically valued at the demand side, which is catured bythe notion o substantiveness. Data rom the World Values Surveys about doens


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o countries across the globe enable Welel and Klingemann to test their ideas.ey nd that institutionalied democracy, as indicated by Freedom House ratings,indeed correlates with democratic reerences at the mass level. ey roceed withanalying the underlying mechanisms and conclude that democratic congruenceemerges not because citiens internalie the regime choice o elites, but becauseelites satisy mass demands.

n Chater 7, Pia orris seeks to deeen our understanding o citien satis-action with democracy by ocusing on the role o regime erormance. he distin-guishes between rocess accounts and olicy accounts and discusses the assum-tions o both in the literature. e rst emhasie the imortance o the intrinsicquality o democratic governance, as reected in the rotection o civil liberties andolitical rights, whereas the second emhasie the relevance o evaluations o gov-ernments olicy outut, as reected by economic erormance but also actors such

as security or social olicy. orris uses the World Values Survey and nds suort orboth accounts. he secies which indicators are owerul redictors o satisactionwith democracy and which indicators do not have an eect, thus shedding newlight on (sometimes contradictory) ndings rom revious studies.

as Denters, scar Gabriel and awrence Rose use a similar distinctionbetween dimensions o judgement in Chater 8, where they shit the ocus to thelocal level o government. ey address the relative imortance o rocedural andunctional considerations or citiens views on good local governance and analye

individual level dierences in these views. e analysis, which utilies data romnational surveys in the etherlands and orway, shows that both countries dislaysimilar atterns. Citiens consider most o the items that ta either dimension orjudgement imortant, which suorts orris ndings that citiens care about theinut as well as the outut side o democratic governance. Denters et al. urthershow that citiens dislay stronger suort or items that link u with the notionso reresentative democracy, articiatory democracy, and eective and ecientgovernment, than or items reecting the idea o limited government. ey alsoshow that these views do not dier strongly across dierent social and olitical

grous and hence conclude that there is a air amount o consensus among citiensabout what constitutes good local governance.

e nal contribution o Part II shits the ocus rom the democratic system asa whole to its main actors: olitical arties. n Chater 9, Kees Aarts and erntAardal revisit the debate in electoral research about the roimity model and direc-tional model o issue voting and hence analye whether arties benet more rommoderate and centrist ideological ositions or rom ositions that are as clear andunambiguous as ossible. Aarts and Aardal utilie data rom 37 democracies across

the world rom the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. ey analye the distri-butions o arty evaluations in relation to let-right ideology in the light o eecta-tions derived rom both models. ne conclusion is that the roimity model worksrelatively well or centrist arties and the directional model works best or artieswith a more ronounced ideological osition. n the whole, however, the suort


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is weakest or the model that is dominant in tetbooks, the roimity model, andmuch stronger or the directional model. is means that, in general, olitical ar-ties benet more rom olariation than rom moderation.

1.4 Political representation in the EuropeanUnion

e contributions described so ar ocus on the national level o government, withthe ecetion o the chater on good local governance. ne o the most imortantdeveloments or democracy, however, has been the increased relevance o trans-national olitical systems. e uroean Union is resumably the most relevanteamle and its democratic system has understandably received much attention in

the literature on democracy. Jacques omassen has made imortant contributionsto this literature (e.g. chmitt and omassen 1999; omassen and chmitt 1999;teunenberg and omassen 2002; omassen 2009; Mair and omassen 2010).e two chaters o Part III ocus on olitical reresentation and olicy congruencein the uroean Union, treating electoral turnout and arty choice.

n Chater 11, Cees van der ijk, Hermann chmitt and liyahu air start withthe observation that in uroean Parliament elections turnout has always beenlower than in national elections and oten in large margins. ey ask the question

i consequently articular grous are better reresented than others, which couldhave imortant imlications or olicy making. an der ijk et al. use voter surveydata rom theEuropean Election Study 2009 and analye whether articular oliti-cal arties would have received more or less seats i turnout had been higher. eirmain conclusion, which matches ndings on revious elections, is that the low levelo turnout in the 2009 uroean Parliament election had virtually no imact on thedistribution o seats: only one seat would have changed i turnout had been nor-mal. o the quality o olitical reresentation in the uroean Union works muchbetter than one might think on the basis o the low levels o electoral articiation.

ess ositive conclusions are reached in Chater 11, where Rosema and De riesassess the quality o olitical reresentation in the uroean Union. ey analyewhether in both available electoral channels national and uroean elections voters select arties that best reresent their olicy reerences. Rosema and Deries use the survey data rom 15 countries o theEuropean Election Study 2009. Aseected, voters somewhat more oten voted correctly in terms o let-right than interms o uroean integration. Rosema and De ries observed airly strong biasesat the aggregate level or the second dimension o conict: voters were relatively

likely to choose arties less urosketic than themselves. is was caused by theact that olitical arties showed limited variation in their stances on this toic.Moreover, oosition to uroean integration was mostly voiced by small artiesat the etreme o either side o the let-right continuum and thereore were notviable otions or most voters. is means that the quality o olitical reresenta-


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tion in the uroean Union could benet rom uture changes in the suly side oelectoral olitics.

1.5 The impact of the economic context

n the ourth and nal art o this book the imact o the economic contet isocused on. is theme has erhas not been as central in the work o Jacquesomassen as some o the other themes discussed above, but it has received atten-tion in much o the literature relevant to olitical reresentation, esecially studieso voting (see e.g. omassen 2005). Moreover, in the light o the ndings on therelationshi between regime erormance and suort or democracy, the ques-tion arises how the recent nancial and economic crisis has aected suort or

democracy. n Chater 12, Jan van Deth, who was Jacques omassens rst Ph.D.student, takes u this question. He uses survey data rom theEuropean Social Surveyto study the develoment o citiens olitical orientations across 21 countries in thisturbulent time eriod. an Deth shows that by the end o 2008, when the recessionhad strongly inuenced the oinion climate, citiens lie satisaction and oliticalcondence had not really suered rom it. An in-deth analysis o the situationin Germany in the nal months o 2008 conrms this conclusion: the increasedeconomic threat was not matched by similar shits in olitical trust or lie satisac-

tion. What should be noted though, is that cross-national variation eisted. nestriking nding is that in countries where the negative economic develomentswere relatively small, hainess in act increased. Yet the most relevant conclusionresumably concerns the robustness o democratic suort. democratic attitudeseasily survive the worst economic crisis since the Great Deression, this is a goodsign or democracy.

For most citiens and oliticians, thinking about the economy during the lastcoule o years resumably means thinking about bad economic times. However, inother times or at other laces the mirror image may aly and the economy is ros-

erous. n Chater 13, the nal contribution to this volume, la isthaug en HannaMarthe arud eamine the eects o economic roserity by ocusing on orway.ey argue that whereas this country once was a tyical eamle o cleavage-basedolitics, with the center-erihery cleavage being o rimary imortance, the cleav-age structure has lost much o its imact. is has made room or the imact o theeconomic situation on election outcomes, with the orwegian oil wealth as themost relevant actor. isthaug and arud analye ublic oinion data and observeinteresting dierences between three elections in the rst decade o the 21 century.

Desite the economic growth, in 2001 and 2005 the incumbent arties lost substan-tially. is aears to result rom the act that government olicy did not meet theeectations that citiens had. n 2009, on the other hand, when the economic crisishad emerged, the government could use the oil wealth or sending and citienswere satised with how the government dealt with the situation. is shows that


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citiens do not blindly hold governments accountable or the economic situation,but resond to how governments deal with it in good times as well as bad.

1.6 Conclusion

e twelve contributions to this book are connected to each other in several waysand we have summaried each in some detail in order to demonstrate their inter-relatedness. aken together, the broader icture that emerges rom these contri-butions is that o reresentative democracy that, on the whole, unctions ratherwell. e dynamics between citiens and their reresentatives and the governmentindicate that olitical elites are resonsive to citiens, and citiens are resonsiveto olitical elites. ese dynamics are otentimes comle and hence it may not

always be clear how (or even if) democracy unctions but a close look and careulanalysis on the basis o aroriate data reveal that much o the mechanisms thatmake u the olitical system meets u to the ideals. Policy reerences o citiensare reected well in reerences o their reresentatives in arliament and in gov-ernment olicy, at least when it comes to the major dimensions o olitical conictsuch as let-right ideology. Furthermore, across the world olitical regimes otensuly the democratic governance that citiens demand. is is not to say thatecetions do not eist. For eamle, there are countries where the tye o rule con-

trasts sharly with the desire o its oulation. And in the uroean Union citiensdo not seem able to eress their olicy reerences with resect to the uroeanintegration roject, and hence olicy congruence on this dimension o oliticalconict may not be otimal. evertheless, the otimistic conclusions drawn in theseveral chaters clearly outnumber the eressions o worry. is seems to contrastwith the tendency that one can oten observe in ublic debate, in which the re-sumed crisis o legitimacy seems to be a ermanent eature a central toic in theormal arewell lecture by Jacques omassen on the occasion o his retirement.

e individual chaters link not only to each other, but also to the work o Jacques

omassen. e themes that are addressed have been central in his work and thechaters have also been created in the sirit o Jacques omassens aroach. Wehoe that readers will agree that individually as well as collectively the chaterscontribute to our understanding o the unctioning o the democratic system inmodern societies. ere seems no better way to ay tribute to the work o Jacquesomassen than by making a modest contribution to something that he himselhas contributed to so enormously: the insight into how democracy works.


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Par I

The BasicPrinciples: PoliticalRepresentation andPolicy Congruence


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The Dynamics of

Political Representation

Russell J. Dalton, David M. Farrell

and Ian McAllister

2.1 Introduction

T p f p otential or modern mass democracy. nstead o directly articiating in oliti-

cal decision making as in the Greek olis or the wiss canton, the ublic selectslegislators to reresent them in government deliberations. Citien control over gov-ernment thus occurs through eriodic, cometitive elections to select these elites.lections should ensure that government ocials are resonsive and accountableto the ublic. y acceting this electoral rocess, the ublic gives its consent to begoverned by the elites selected. e democratic rocess thus deends on an eectiveand resonsive relationshi between the reresentative and the reresented.

e linkage between the ublic and the olitical decision makers is one o theessential toics or the study o democratic olitical systems (e.g., Miller and tokes

1963; Miller et al. 1999; Powell 2000; hairo et al. 2010). e toic o reresen-tation is entirely aroriate in a volume dedicated to Jacques omassen sincethis has been one o his career research interests (omassen 1976, 1994, 2009a;omassen and chmitt 1997; chmitt and omassen 1999). is general toichas also generated etensive research on the nature o elections and citien votingbehavior, which eamines the choices available to voters and their decision-makingrocess. A related literature eamines the rocess o government ormation, and thecorresondence between electoral outcomes and the resulting government. Rere-

sentation research involves the merger o these two literatures to eamine the corre-sondence between citiens and their elected leaders, and the actors that maimieagreement.

is reresentation literature rovides the oundation or the research resentedhere; however, we oer a dierent ersective on how elections roduce democratic

2


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reresentation and accountability. Most o the revious literature views electionsand government ormation as discrete decision-making rocesses. oters maketheir electoral choices much as they might make a major consumer urchase ina car dealershi or a deartment store, and a large art o the literature elicitlyutilies such an economic choice aroach. imilarly, research on the ormationo government coalitions tyically adots the same aroach, ecet that oliticalleaders and arties are making the choices on cabinet ormation once the votes arecounted. n terms o game theory, this aroach is like modeling reresentation asdiscrete decision-making at one oint in time, like buying an automobile or newbig-screen television. is leads to a ocus on the wisdom or accuracy o this onedecision; on whether eole are rationally making a choice that matches their re-erences.

course, elections and democracy are an ongoing rocess. e outcome o one

election is just one oint in this rocess. e erormance o arties in governmentinevitably aects decisions by voters and elites at the net election. us, when anew election aroaches, voters enter the camaign with this evidence o rior gov-erning as a starting oint or their evaluations. Citiens also look orward to whatthey eect o the government ater the election. is essay suggests that ratherthan a discrete, oint-in-time choice, democracy is based on a rocess o ongoing,dynamic reresentation that occurs through a comarison o the ast and the utureacross reeated elections. n other words, elections unction not simly as a method

o collective olitical choice at election time, but as a dynamic method of steering thecourse of government. We rovide reliminary emirical evidence o this rocess inthis article.

is article roceeds in our stes. First, we briey review the revious literatureon olitical reresentation that rovides a oundation or our research, and oer adynamic etension o this literature. econd, we introduce the emirical evidencewe use rom the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (SES). ird, we eaminethe emirical corresondence between citiens and their government based on theSES data as a test o the dynamic model. ur ourth and nal section discusses the

imlications o our ndings.

2.2 Conceptualizing representation

What does it mean to be reresented in a democracy? Prior research has evolvedthrough three dierent answers to this question, rom studying individual legisla-tures, to olitical arties, to the reresentativeness o governments. First, the early

Michigan reresentation studies ocused on the link between a constituency andits reresentative. is ollowed rom the long-standing debate over trustee-dele-gate models o reresentation in a single member lurality (S) electoral system(Miller and tokes 1963; arnes 1977; Farah 1980; Converse and Pierce 1986; McAl-lister 1991). is research comared constituency oinions to those o the legisla-


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tors elected rom the district, and yielded mied emirical results, esecially in thearty-dominated uroean cases.

n a second hase, research shited its ocus to the link between voters and theirreerred arties rather than individual legislators. is research drew uon respon-

sible party governmenttheories o olitical reresentation (Rose 1974; Castles and

Wildenmann 1986; Kat 1987, 1997; londel and Cotta 2001). is arty govern-ment model seems more relevant or arliamentary systems with strong oliticalarties (omassen 1976; Dalton 1985; Holmberg 1989; saiasson and Holmberg1996; Matthews and alen 1999). n these nations, arties rather than candidatesare the rime olitical actors. e arty government model thus comares agree-ment between voters and their selected arty. e voter hal o the dyad is com-osed o all arty suorters in a nation (even i there are geograhic electoraldistricts or regions); the elite hal is comosed o arty ocials as a collective. Can-

didates are selected by arty elites rather than through oen rimaries, so they arerst and oremost arty reresentatives. e resonsible arty government modelurther resumes that members o a arty s arliamentary delegation act in unison(owler et al. 1999). Parties vote as a bloc in arliament, although there may beinternal debate beore the arty osition is decided. Parties eercise control overthe government and the olicymaking rocess through arty control o the nationallegislature. n sum, the choice o arties rather than constituency-based reresen-tation rovides the electorate with indirect control over the actions o legislators

and the aairs o government. artori (1968: 471) thus maintains that citiens inWestern democracies are reresented through and by arties. is is inevitable (ital-ics in original).

As cross-national emirical research on reresentation eanded, this led to aneven broader research ocus on the etent to which governments reresent the citi-ens who elected them. Powell (2000; Huber and Powell 1994) was one o the rstto comare the et-Right osition o the median voters (rom ublic oinion sur-veys) with the et-Right osition o the governing arties (rom eert surveys)or a large set o established Western democracies. He ound broad congruence,

which varied with the clarity o government resonsibility and other contetualactors. ince then several studies have used data rom the Comparative Manifes-tos Project to comare citien-government congruence (Klingemann et al. 1994;McDonald and udge 2005). Much o this research has considered how electoralsystem rules might aect the degree o congruence between citiens and their gov-ernment in Western democracies (Huber and Powell 1994; Wessels 1999; Powell2000, 2006). And recent research has utilied the surveys rom the ComparativeStudy of Electoral Systems (SES) to eand the bases o comarison to include new

democracies in astern uroe and ast Asia (McAllister 2005; lais and odet2006; Golder and tramski 2010; Powell 2010a).n broad terms, studies o voter-arty congruence and citiens-government con-

gruence have ound high levels o agreement evidence that democracy works.For instance, two cross-national studies o voter-arty congruence ound strikingly


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high correlations between the voter-arty dyads on et-Right ositions (Dalton,Farrell and McAllister orthcoming; chmitt and omassen 1997). e rst studycomared arties or the nations in the SES roject, and the second comaredarties cometing in the 1994 uroean Parliament election. imilarly, several re-resentation studies show reasonably high levels o congruence between the ub-lics et-Right osition and those o their government (omassen 1994; Wessels2007). ther research has eamined congruence between ublic olicy reerencesand government olicy oututs, also concluding that ublic oinion matters (Pageand hairo 1992; Wleien and oroka 2007; see also rikson et al. 2002). ased onsuch evidence, oroka and Wleien (2003) come to a simle conclusion: Democ-racy works.

ese reresentation studies, however, have largely eamined reresentation asa cross-sectional relationshi between citiens and arties/government based on

the results o a single election or at a single oint in time. Do voters in an electionget a government that is generally congruent with their overall olicies reer-ences which is the essence o democratic reresentation? ome o this literatureresents a theoretical debate on the nature o reresentation. Does reresentationunction through voters rosectively evaluating alternatives and roviding gov-ernments with a mandate or uture action, or do voters retrosectively judge theerormance o ast governments and hold them accountable at election time (e.g.,Preworski et al. 1999)? is is a reasonable starting oint, but we believe that this

aroach creates a alse dichotomy and missecies the actual nature o democraticreresentation.Democracy is not a single event, but an ongoing rocess. nce elected, eole

judge arties not just by what they said in the camaign, but by how they actuallygovern and by the decisions they take that aect eoles lives. ometimes the gabetween camaign rhetoric and the reality o governing can be large. George W.ushs read my lis, no new taes comes to mind. And there are numerous caseswhere governments ollowed an uneected course ater taking oce, or whereeternal events orced a major change in olicy direction. Parties and govern-

ments also camaign on a large range o issues, and the attention given to each maychange overall ublic ercetions o government erormance because the ublicsagreement on secic issues should naturally vary. etween elections new artiesor olitical leaders emerge, so citien decisions might shit with a new choice set.n act, given the comleity o olitics it is almost inevitable that some voters(and eert analysts) are surrised by some o the actions o government once ittakes oce. Consequently, the t between citiens and the government is likely tochange over a multi-year electoral cycle.

us, rather than a single consumer urchase or a single decision game, the re-resentative asect o elections is more like a reetitive decision rocess or reetitivegame. e analogy o navigating a sailboat on the sea might be useul. e ublic(the catain) makes the best choice in directing the shi o state at the moment,and then reacts as conditions change. scandal touches a arty or a arty leader-


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shi aears ineective, voters may select the best o the remaining otions in oneelection. a government moves too ar in one direction, the net election rovidesa mechanism to shit direction back toward the ublics collective reerences. the ublic oversteers in one election, inuenced by a charismatic ersonality or anintense issue controversy, they can correct course at the net election. And i condi-tions in the world change, elections can also steer a new course in reaction to thesechanges. n short, reresentative democracy is a reetitive decision-making rocessthat rovides a method or the citienry to adjust the course o government, cor-recting discreancies in direction that arise rom outcomes in the revious electionor the autonomous actions o the incumbent government.

n act, we might argue that this democracys rimary strength is its ability toreeatedly enter such eedback into the olitical rocess. Prosective voting on aarty or governments election maniesto is only likely to generate meaningul re-

resentation i there is accountability at the net election. Retrosective evaluationso a governments erormance have greater meaning i considered in terms o thegovernments initial olicy goals. o dichotomie accountability and reresentationmisses the key oint that both can unction meaningully in a rocess where theyboth are considered on an ongoing basis across elections.

is dynamic ersective aears in time series research linking ublic oinionand government olicy oututs (Page and hairo 1992; Wleien and oroka 2007),but it is less evident in reresentation studies that ocus on voter-arty congruence

or ublic-government congruence at one oint in time. is essay rovides aninitial emirical test o this dynamic hyothesis using data rom the ComparativeStudy of Electoral Systems roject. e comarison o citien and government osi-tions across nations and across time is a dicult emirical challenge because o thedata requirements it imoses. We thereore resent a simle rst test o the dynam-ic hyothesis. We ask whether citien agreement with a newly elected governmentis greater than with the re-election government.If representation is a dynamic proc-ess, then post-election congruence generally should be greater than pre-election congruence,as citizens steer the ship of state back in the direction they want it to follow.

2.3 The empirical evidence

o study reresentation we need measures o both citien ositions and govern-ment ositions. e initial wave o reresentation studies were single nation studiesbased on surveys o the ublic and elites. ther research, such as the Comparative

Manifestos Projector arty eert surveys, estimates arty ositions rom their elec-

tion latorms or the evaluations o academic eerts but lacks data on citienositions in these same arty systems. o comare citien and government osi-tions, revious research oten merged data rom dierent sources or estimated citi-en oinions rom the ositions o olitical arties. arge, cross-national comari-


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sons o citien-government corresondence are thus relatively rare in the researchliterature.

We use a dierent emirical base or our research. e Comparative Study of Elec-toral Systems is a coordinated cross-national survey conducted by eisting electionstudy teams rom around the world. Particiating countries include a commonmodule o survey questions in their ost-election studies. All surveys must meetcertain quality and comarability standards, and all are conducted as nationallyreresentative surveys. ese survey data are then merged into a common data lealong with a variety o contetual variables. e SES conducted its second modulebetween 2001 and 2006 and included 40 elections in 38 nations. is wide array odemocracies sans established and new democracies, and is sread across uroe,orth America, atin America and Asia. We ecluded two non-democratic elec-tions Kyrgystan and Hong Kong and three cases where there was insucient

inormation to comute either the re- or ost-election government scores Alba-nia, srael and the Philiines and thus base our analyses on 35 nations.

o measure the agreement between voters and the government, we begin byassuming that arty cometition is structured along a et-Right dimension(Downs 1957; Co 1990). Past studies o olitical reresentation have oten usedthe et-Right scale as a summary o olitical ositions (Dalton 1985; Klingemannet al. 1994; chmitt and omassen 1999c). We do not assume that most votershave an understanding o et and Right in terms o sohisticated ideological

concets, such as socialism, liberalism or other hilosohical concets. nstead,the et-Right scale is a political orientation that hels individuals make oliticalchoices (Fuchs and Klingemann 1989; nglehart 1990). We eect that ositions onthis scale generally summarie the issues and cleavages that dene olitical com-etition to individuals in a nation. Ronald nglehart describes the scale as a sorto suer-issue that reresents the major conicts that are resent in the oliticalsystem (nglehart 1990: 273; also see Gabel and Huber 2000: 96; Dalton 2006).Converse and Pierce (1986: 772-774) urther suggested that the et-Right rame-work can rovide a means o reresentation and oular control even when secic

olicy ositions are ill-ormed. ven i the secic denitions o et and Rightvary across individuals and nations, we assume that the simle structure o a generalet-Right scale can summarie the olitical ositions o voters and olitical ar-ties.

e SES asks resondents to osition themselves along a et-Right scale usinga standard survey question:

n olitics eole sometimes talk o let and right. Where would you lace yoursel

on a scale rom 0 to 10, where 0 means the let and 10 means the right? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Left Right


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Previous analyses show that almost 90 ercent o the ublic in the diverse set oSES nations have a et-Right osition, and this increases urther among thosewho voted in the revious election (McAllister and White 2007; Dalton 2009). ishigh level also transcends old and new democracies, and nations o quite dier-ent heritages. Furthermore, a wide range o research demonstrates that such et-Right orientations are strongly related to citien ositions on the salient issues inthe society (nglehart 1990; Dalton 2006). For each nation we calculated the medianscore for the entire publicwho eressed a et-Right osition.

e second ste in estimating citien-government agreement requires that weidentiy the osition o the government in et-Right terms. o do this we rstneed to measure the osition o olitical arties that might comrise the govern-ment. ne common method is to measure the arty ositions using data rom theComparative Manifestos Project (Huber and Powell 1994; Klingemann et al. 1994;

McDonald and udge 2005). e maniesto data have the advantage that theyare available or a long time san or most Western democracies, and have beeneanded to include the new democracies o astern uroe. Another alternativeis to utilie academic eerts to measure arty ositions (enoit and aver 2006).

While both o the arty maniesto and eert methods have their own advan-tages and disadvantages, we rely on another source the citiens themselves. eSES asked resondents to lace the major olitical arties on the same et-Rightscale as they used to identiy their own et-Right osition. e roject guidelines

called or the survey to ask or the locations o u to si signicant arties. enumber o arties actually evaluated across nations ranges rom three arties in theUnited tates to nine arties in France and the etherlands. is has the advantagethat evaluations are done or the same election as voters own sel-location, and thedata are collected simultaneously or citiens and arties. Furthermore, since thequestion is the etent to which citiens elect arties and governments that rere-sent their olitical views, citiens ercetions o the arties is an ideal standard orsuch comarisons.

A relatively large roortion o the ublic in most nations does rovide a et-

Right osition or the arties. o determine each artys osition on the et-Right scale we used the mean lacement o the entire electorate as the broadestmeasure o the citienry, even broader than just those who voted. n France, oreamle, the Communist Party receives an average score o 2.4 on the et-Rightscale in 2002, while the ational Front is laced at 7.9. y comarison, Americanslaced the Democrats at 4.2 on the et-Right scale in 2004, and the Reublicansare located at 6.6.

o what etent can we consider ublic ercetions o the arties an accurate

assessment o the arties olitical ositions? ose who doubt the ublics abilityto eress their own views in et-Right terms would understandably question theublics ability to summarie accurately the et-Right osition o olitical arties.ne answer is that these ercetions arereality to the voters i they use them inmaking their electoral choices. n addition, in other research we have comared


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citien lacements to other measures o arty ositions, and the strength o agree-ment is strikingly high. ndividual citiens may have imrecise imressions aboutolitics, but when the views o the entire ublic are aggregated, the ercetions oordinary eole are virtually identical to the et-Right scores given by oliticalscience roessors judging the same arties.

We net used these arty scores to dene the overall olitical osition o the gov-ernment. ince most arliamentary governments include more than a single artyin a coalition, this oten requires combining scores or the arties in the governingcoalition. We ollowed the standard methodology to dene the governments et-Right osition as the average o the governing arties, weighted by each artysshare o cabinet ortolios. is gives greater weight to large arties that eercisemore inuence in setting government olicy, and undoubtedly are more visible ascitiens evaluate the government as a whole. And naturally, in a single arty gov-

ernment the governments osition is synonymous with this arty. is methodwas used to estimate a et-Right score or the re-election government and theost-election government.

2.4 Citizens and governments

e standard methodology in eamining the reresentativeness o government is to

comare the osition o the median citien or voter, with the osition o the gov-ernment. e degree o congruence is an indicator o the etent to which electionsgenerate a democratic government that reects the ublic overall.

ere are, o course, many caveats and conditions that recede such a comari-son (Powell 2000, 2010a). e use o a single et-Right dimension to summariecitien and voter ositions has both advantages and disadvantages in caturingolitical reality, esecially when used to comare citiens and arties across a verydiverse grou o democracies (omassen 2009c). ne might ask whether it isbetter to use the median citien as a measure o ublic reerences, or erhas the

median o all those who voted. r, one might oer a narrower view o reresenta-tion and maintain that the government is there to reresent those who electedit, not the ublic at large. imilarly, the weighted combination o arties in thegoverning cabinet might not ully reect the ower o each arty in dening gov-ernment actions. And in the case o multiarty governments, the ublics abilityto select the government is oten sulanted by ost-election negotiations amongarty elites (Powell 2000). n addition, our measures o ublic oinion and govern-ment ositions rom the SES roject are subject to measurement error, which may

be signicant with only 35 nations or our analyses. And so we aroached theseanalyses with modest eectations.Figure 2.1 resents the relationshi between the et-Right osition o the

median citien and the et-Right osition o the ost-election government. eimortant nding is the strong congruence between citiens and their elected gov-


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ernments. etist ublics generally select etist governments, and similarly on theRight. ne way o summariing this is to note that only our o the 36 nations liein the two o-diagonal quadrants which indicate a government that is basically outo synch with its ublic. As we should eect, the scores or the median citiencluster near the center o the et-Right scale, between 4.0 and 6.0, since there is acenter-eaked distribution o et-Right ublic attitudes in most nations. e et-Right ositions o governments are more varied, with a standard deviation that isthree times larger than or the median citien osition. is means that governmentsaccentuate dierences between electorates. n other words, a hal-oint dierence inthe citiens median osition redicts a ull-oint change in the comosition o thegovernment. is corresonds to the well-known attern because the governmentwas selected by only hal the ublic, and thus it is tyically more olaried than theublic as a whole. n overall terms, the congruence in Figure 2.1 rovides strong evi-

dence that democratic reresentation works even over this diverse set o democracies as noted by the .57 correlation between these two variables.

Figure 2.1 Comparing citizens and post-election government on Left-Right scale

Aul

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ment

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Left/Right Position of Median Voter

r = 0.57

Note: The gure plots the median Left-Right position of the public and the average post-election government position (party scores weighted by

shares of cabinet seats) for each nation. N = 35.

Country abbreviations are listed in the appendix of this chapter.

Source: Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), Module II


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Most analyses o olitical reresentation sto with the evidence just resented inFigure 2.1, or eamine actors such as the structure o government or the electoralsystem that might systematically aect the level o congruence across nations. ycontrast, our dynamic model o democratic reresentation leads us to ask anotherquestion: do elections roduce ost-election governments that are more congru-ent with ublic reerences than the re-election government? As we have argued,and democratic theorists have maintained, elections should rovide the ower toremove governments that are not consistent with ublic reerences while retain-ing governments that share their olitical views. We might eect a broadly similarrelationshi across re- and ost-election governments because o the incumbencyadvantage and the ersistence o government. ut theory would redict the con-gruence should generally be greater or the ost-election comarison. is is a basicassumtion about accountability in democratic theory, but to our knowledge it has

not been emirically tested.Figure 2.2 comares the et-Right osition o the median citien and the

weighted et-Right osition o the re-election government. e attern is strik-

Figure 2.2 Comparing citizens and pre-election government on Left-Right scale

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ofPre-ElectionGovernmen

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Left/Right Position of Median Voter

r = 0.18

Note: The gure plots the median Left-Right position of the public and the average pre-election government position (party scores weighted by

shares of cabinet seats) for each nation. N = 35.

Source: CSE S, Module II


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ingly dierent rom the revious gure. For the eact same set o nations there isonly a weak and statistically insignicant relationshi between citiens and the re-election government (r = .18). n this comarison, about a third o the nations arein the two o-diagonal quadrants. ain and Poland, or eamle, had re-electiongovernments that the ublic erceived as much more conservative than the mediancitien, while the Romanian government was seen as much more liberal than themedian citien. Moreover, this is not because the ublic has changed its osition(it is the same in both gures), or the ublic changed their et-Right lacemento individual arties (the same arty scores are used in both gures to calculate thegovernment osition). Another way to eress this attern is to comare the abso-lute dierence in citien-government et-Right ositions or the re-election andost-election governments. is dierence decreases rom an average dierent o1.30 or the re-election government to 1.13 or the ost-election government.

ese results suggest that by the end o an election cycle, many governmentshave become distant rom the current olitical values o the ublic that initiallyelected them. is is when electoral accountability can imrove democratic rere-

Figure 2.3 Left-Right position of pre- and post-election government

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ofPost-ElectionGovernme

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r = 0.04

Note: The gure plots the average Left-Right position of governments (party scores weighted by shares of cabinet seats) for each nation. N = 35.

Source: CSE S, Module II


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sentation. is disconnection between citiens and many re-election governmentsarises rom many sources, and we eamine some o them below. e essential oint,however, is that in nations where citiens see the re-election government as outo synch with the ublics broad olitical orientations, elections aear to rovide away to increase congruence.

ese analyses indicate that elections can change the course o government,either shiting the tiller o state to the right or the let. And yet, we might re-sume that there is a generally ersisting attern o congruence as we have measuredit: letist ublics will generally elect letist governments, and rightist ublics willelect rightist governments. And most o the time, governments (or the major coali-tion arties) are reelected. We can marshal more direct evidence on the ideologicalchangeability o government as a result o elections by comaring the re-electionand ost-election governments directly in the SES nations.

Figure 2.3 lots the re-election and ost-election et-Right ositionso the governments. First, about hal o the nations in this set (19) had elec-tions that returned the incumbent government to oce or roduced small shits(less than .50 on the et-Right scale). at is, these nations lie directly on the45-degree line indicating the same re/ost-election osition, or very close tothe line i a small shit in cabinet seats changed the average or the coalition.

e dynamic aect o elections enters when there is a signicant change in gov-ernment between elections. is is quite aarent in the nations that are located

o the diagonal. For instance, the 2004 anish election roduced a shit romthe Peoles Party-led government o Jos Mara Anar to a socialist governmento Jos uis Rodrgue aatero. is caused a 4.5 oint shit in the et-Rightcomosition o the anish government. Poland similarly eerienced a large shitto the et when the Democratic et Alliance victory roduced more than a 6oint letward shit in the government (on a 0-10 scale). Conversely, elections inDenmark, the etherlands, orway and Portugal roduced a sieable rightwardshit between re and ost-election governments.

ne can rovide a ost-hoc elanation or the shits in government in most o

these cases. n ain, or instance, the ublic had grown weary with the s drit tothe Right and the arty s new leader did not have Anars initial oularity; aa-tero also was a oular reresentative o the et. e desire or change was thencomounded by the Madrid terrorist attack on the eve o the election. uch actorschange the vote shares going to dierent arties, which then shits the governmentormed ater the election. Furthermore, since the arty choices were highly olar-ied in ain, a shit in course by the ublic roduced an even greater et-Rightshit in the comosition o the ost-election government. lections tend to over-

steer the shi o state or this reason.n addition, there are some systematic atterns in these cross-time comarisons.For instance, the overall et-Right olariation o the arty system is stronglyrelated to the absolute dierence in the et-Right osition re/ost-election gov-ernments (r = .46). is resumably occurs because more olaried arty choices


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mean that when voters do change course, the available arty choices generate alarge shit in government ositions.

As we might eect rom what Powell reers to as a roortional vision (2000),the shits in re/ost-election governments are also much greater in the roor-tional reresentation system than in majoritarian electoral system (ta = .35). Whileit might have been eected that systems would roduce gradual adatation toshiting vote shares among arties, the greater diversity o choices creates morevolatility, as does the greater reonderance o ost-election coalition negotiationsleading to ost-hoc rogram and olicy renewal by the articiating arties. venthough we might eect majoritarian democracies to roduce substantial olicyshit when the majority changes (as Finer (1975) would argue), the obvious oint isthat a change in government occurs less requently in these systems (Powell 2010b,able 11.1). Among the si majoritarian elections in our set, only one roduced a

change in government.Finally, re/ost-election shits tend to be larger in new democracies than in

established democracies (ta = .18). is seems consistent with a olitical law oentroy that would suggest greater volatility in new democracies which decreaseswith the institutionaliation o the olitical system and, more secically, with thedeveloment o a stable arty system. Yet, we also note that some o the largestinstances o re/ost-election volatility occur in established democracies.

At least to the authors, this re/ost-election comarison is a striking attern.

o the etent that these results rom the SES nations are generaliable to otherdemocracies, this means that the comosition o a ost-election government isessentially indeendent o the re-election government (r = -.04). is might beinterreted as meaning that elections are a random rocess, with no redictabilityo what will haen ater the votes are counted. However, Figures 2.1 and 2.2 showthat this is not a random rocess, since voters are steering government toward aosition more consistent with their et-Right reerences. we return to thesailboat analogy rom earlier in this essay, a sailboat must tack to starboard and ortto make headway; these shits might seem random but are necessary to go orward.

imilarly, it aears that elections roduce turns to the et, or to the Right (andsometimes continue on the same course) in order to generate a democratic coursethat is generally congruent with ublic reerences. e median ritish voter, orinstance, has a choice o going et with abour or to the Right with the Con-servatives, but not a government ormed down the center. n summary, our nd-ings rovide strong evidence that elections do generate a dynamic o democraticreresentation i we trace this rocess over time.

2.5 Conclusion

ormative theories o democracy suggest that elections erorm two essentialunctions. First, elections should ensure that governments are accountable or their


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actions to the citiens who elected them. econd, elections should erorm a rere-sentative unction, by ensuring that the legislature broadly reects the distributiono oinions within the electorate. e tensions between these two unctions areobvious, and in a range o books and aers, omassen has drawn attention to howthese tensions vary across dierent institutional contets, with majoritarian democ-racies stressing the accountability unction, consensus democracies the reresenta-tive unction (see omassen 1994, 1999, 2002, 2005; omassen and chmitt 1997).omassens seminal contribution has been to enhance our understanding o howinstitutional arrangements interact with individual olitical behavior to resolve thistension. His key role in the SES roject during the 1990s has enabled many othese hyotheses to be tested emirically. n articular, drawing on his uroeanbackground, omassen has ointed to the role o olitical arties in mediating therocesses o accountability and reresentation in modern democracies (omassen

1994).e results resented here build very directly on omassens ioneering work

on reresentation and accountability. We nd that rather than elections acting asa discrete, oint-in-time choice, as it is oten assumed in theoretical and emiri-cal studies, there is a dynamic relationshi between governments and voters. urndings suggest that democracy is based on a rocess o ongoing reresentationthat occurs through retrosective as well as rosective evaluations o governmenterormance. Peole elect a government, but then have the chance to reevaluate this

decision at the net election. Democracy works by this dynamic rocess over time,even i decisions at one election deviate rom what was desired or eected. Char-acteristically, omassen had anticiated this conclusion, ointing in a 2005 articlewith Andeweg to the dynamic interaction between evaluations made rior to andater an election (Andeweg and omassen 2005). While their emirical case studywas a single country the etherlands the concetual tyology that Andewegand omassen develoed has wide alication to comarative studies o oliticalreresentation.

e net stage in this research is to gain an understanding o how and why this

dynamic relationshi between voters and governments takes lace. ecically, whydoes the emirical corresondence between citiens and their governments increasewhen we comare re- and ost-election evaluations? esting these elanations isbeyond the scoe o this essay, but ve elanations immediately occur as worthyo urther study. e most straightorward elanation is that citiens may changetheir median osition, or there may be dierential turnout between grous o voterswhich will change the aggregate images o arties. We know that low turnout hasa range o olitical consequences (ut and Marsh 2007), so it ollows that turnout

may inuence the let-right osition o the electorate as well. A variant o thiselanation suggests that i voters change their images o the arties, erhas inresonse to changes in leadershi, this will in turn alter their median osition. uchan elanation would certainly aly to the ritish abour Party under ony lair


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or the German S under Gerhard chrder, but whether it alies more generallyis an oen question.

e other otential elanations ocus on eogenous actors, such as a shareconomic downturn, a olitical scandal or the entry (or eit) o a charismatic leaderonto the olitical stage. uch changes may lead eole to vote against the incum-bent government, indeendently o whether they agree with it in et-Right terms.oters may also erceive governments as acting dierently in oce to what theysaid they would do beore the election. When this occurs, a uture election er-mits voters to correct the course o government. e nal elanation oints to theolicy agenda o arties. e changing salience o olitical issues between elections,which aects vote shares but not the overall et-Right ositions o the arties,may be a actor. For instance, one election may be concerned with the economy, thenet about social welare. ince elections decide a ackage o olicies, it is inevitable

that the issue hierarchy will act like winds bueting our sailboat o state.Whatever elanations emerge rom uture emirical studies, the overall assess-

ment o the health o reresentative democracy is good. e dynamic that we haveidentied in the reresentative linkage between citiens and governments is evi-dence o a corrective rocess that oerates rom one electoral cycle to the net. nthe lead-u to an election voters may have tired o the government, and are unsurewhich way to turn in the aroaching election. e congruence between the twoarts o the classic dyad has weakened. e election allows voters to make the cor-

rection and to identiy more strongly with the newly incumbent government.

Notes

1 Although electoral system dierences are not our rimary concern, we should note thatthese new studies now question whether the electoral system signicantly aects theoverall level o citien-government congruence (see Powell 2004, 2010a).

2 tokes (1999) eamined residential elections in atin America and counted nearly a

quarter o the elections were ollowed by a undamental economic olicy shit rom there-election camaign.

3 is analogy is awed because o rincial-agent roblems. ven i the ublic directsgovernment to move in a certain direction, the member o government may choose to actdierently. Perhas in our nautical jargon a signicant ga between rincial and agentswould be an act o mutiny.

4 ere are a ew time series studies in a single nation that begin to elore the dynamicso reresentation over time (Holmberg 2009; omassen 2009c). ut the limited numbero elections makes it dicult to systematically comare levels the reresentativeness ogovernments and how this changes. ther research eamines the congruence betweenublic olicy reerences and government olicy oututs over time (Page and hairo1990; Wleien and oroka 2007).


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5 We grateully acknowledge access to these data rom the roject website (www.cses.org)which has additional documentation on the roject, details o the articiating countriesand the teams, and the questionnaires that have been used in the three modules con-ducted to date.

6 Many ublic oinion researchers have questioned whether ordinary eole can under-stand and utilie abstract olitical concets like et and Right (Converse 1964; ewis-eck et al. 2008). We agree that abstract ideological thinking as meant by oliticaltheorists is largely conned to a small sohisticated stratum o the ublic; we use theet-Right scale as a surrogate or olitical identities and ositions on contemoraryissues.

7 e methods and emirical agreement o several alternative measures o arty ositionsis discussed in Dalton, Farrell and McAllister (orthcoming, chater 5).

8 Across this wide range o nations, a relatively high ercentage can osition the two largest

arties; the average is 82 ercent across 36 legislative elections in Module II. aiwan is aclear outlier where only a minority uses the et-Right scale or themselves or the ar-ties. However, in the net lowest case, Romania, two-thirds o the ublic can locate thetwo largest arties on the et-Right scale. ven in multiarty systems, a strikingly largeercentage o the ublic can osition some o the smaller minor arties.

9 We use the entire electorate to estimate arty ositions, but one might use the sel-location o arty identiers or the sel-location o arty voters. ese are reasonable alter-natives that might yield signicant dierences in a ew instances oten very intriguingcases such as the ositioning o etreme arties. ur initial eloration o these alterna-tives showed high consistency in arty locations across these alternative methods. Forinstance, we comared the et-Right lacement o 115 arties in CSES module II orboth the ublic at-large and those who voted or (or artisans o) each arty. e twomeasures are correlated at .95. Consequently, we rely on the estimates o the entire ublic,which also reduces the likelihood o artisans overestimating agreement by lacing thearty near themselves on the scale.Party ositions were not available or elgium. n this one case we estimated arty osi-tions using the enoit and aver (2006) arty eert survey. For additional inorma-

tion on arty ositions and alternative methodologies see Dalton, Farrell and McAllister(orthcoming).

10 Additional evidence o the validity o citien ercetions comes rom comaring thesearty locations to those derived rom other methodologies. n other research we haveetensively studied the agreement between citiens et-Right lacements o the artiesand other methodologies (Dalton, Farrell and McAllister, orthcoming). For instance,Kenneth enoit and Michael aver have collected academic eerts judgements o artyositions in 2002-03. A total o 168 arties in 27 nations are included in both the SESand eert study. Desite dierent methodologies and a slightly dierent time reerenceor both estimates, there is a very strong agreement between where the ublic and eertslocate olitical arties on the et-Right scale (r = .89). Another standard methodologyestimates arty ositions rom election maniestos. For the 144 arties that overla withthe SES, there is a .63 correlation in arties et-Right ositions. e arty maniesto


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data are valuable, esecially or their cross-national and cross-temoral coverage, butthese data aear to yield the least consistent measures o arty et-Right ositions.

11 We want to acknowledge teen lings o Cornell University who calculated these govern-ment scores.

12 e signicant deviations are elgium, rail, taly and ew ealand.13 For a discussion o arty system olariation, its measurement and eects see Dalton

(2008, 2010). We also considered the eective number o electoral arties (ENE) as acorrelate o re/ost-election dierences. e ENE is not signicantly related to theabsolute dierence o re/ost-governments (r = .07), which urther indicates that it isthe diversity o arties not their numbers that aects governmental change in et-Rightterms.

14 Although we generally nd close agreement between voters and their arties in et-Right terms, the arties at both oles tend to hold more ideological ositions than their

voters. o governments o the et and Right are also likely to be more ideological thantheir own suorters.

Appendix: List of country abbreviations

And AndorraArg ArgentinaAul Australiael eliera railuF urkina Fasoul ulgariaCan CanadaCol ColombiaCy CyrusCe Cech Reublic

Den Denmarkth thioiaFin FinlandFra FranceGer GermanyGha GhanaHun Hungaryce celandndo ndonesiare relandta talyJa JaanJor Jordan


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Me MeicoMol Moldova, Reublic Mor MoroccoMsia Malaysiaet etherlandsor orway ew ealandPer PeruPol PolandPor PortugalRom RomaniaRus Russian FederationAr outh Arica

erb erbiaKor Korea, Reublic lvk lovakialvn loveniaa ainwe wedenwi witerlandai aiwana ailandri rinidad & obagour urkeyUK United KingdomUkr UkraineUru UruguayU United tatesiet iet amam ambia


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Approaching Perfect

Policy Congruenceeasuremen, evelopmen,and elevance for Poliicalepresenaion

Rudy B. Andeweg

t would be naive to eect erect congruence in any real systemo olitical reresentation. Tomassen and Schmitt 1999b: 186

3.1 Measuring policy congruence

I f p p, p -stone or good reresentation is that elected oliticians act in accordance with thereerences o their electorate. n cross-sectional studies this criterion is usuallycalled olicy (or issue- or ideological-) congruence and the main debate is whethermajoritarian electoral systems or roortional reresentation () systems roduce

higher congruence (e.g. Huber and Powell 1994; Miller et al. 1999; lais and odet2006; Powell 2009). n longitudinal studies it is oten called olicy resonsiveness,with studies debating whether some reresentative institutions adat to changesin ublic oinion more quickly (timson et al. 1995), and whether resonsivenessis caused by reresentatives adating to voters, or the other way around (saiassonand Holmberg 1996; Holmberg 1997). All such studies agree that olicy congruence(or resonsiveness) indicates good olitical reresentation. is communisopinio,however, hides considerable disagreement about the roer oerationaliation and

measurement o olicy congruence/resonsiveness.deally, in order to gauge olicy congruence, we need to comare the olicyreerences o voters with the olicy reerences o reresentatives. oter reer-ences are customarily measured in surveys, oten using a general et-Right scaleor secic issue scales. ccasionally, voter reerences are not measured directly,

3


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but are considered to be revealed by their arty reerence: all voters or a arty areassumed to agree with that artys maniesto. bviously, such a strategy biases theresults in the direction o high congruence. e reerences o reresentatives aresometimes measured through content analysis o election maniestos, unrealisti-cally assuming that all reresentatives belonging to a arty agree with all roosalsin that artys maniesto. As most o such studies in the maniesto aroach countwords or sentences devoted to articular olicy areas, they measure a artys issuesaliency rather than a artys issue osition. A lively debate has ensued over thequestion whether olicy ositions can be derived rom saliency measures (see e.g.aver 2001). Alternatively, some studies emloy eert surveys to measure the oli-cy ositions o the various olitical arties (also assuming that there is no variationamong reresentatives o a arty). ne o the risks here is that the local eerts usetheir knowledge o a artys voters ideological reerences as one o the ingredients

to estimate that artys osition, also biasing the results towards high congruence.is bias is even greater in a third tye o study, which measures the reresenta-tives (or more oten: her artys) osition on the basis o the voters ercetion othat osition: it is likely that this ercetion is not indeendent o the voters ownosition. Finally, a ourth tye o study measures reresentatives ositions in thesame way as voters ositions are measured: by asking the reresentatives directly, ina survey, using et-Right and/or issue scales. uch studies, however, are relativelyrare.

A second controversial choice is the roer identication o the reresentative.ome classic American studies comared the individual reresentative with thevoters in his or her constituency (Miller and tokes 1963). Many uroean studiescomare the national electorate with the governing arty or the governing coali-tion. n the latter case the coalitions osition is usually assumed to be the averageo the governing arties ositions (however these are measured), weighted by theirsie in terms o ministerial osts or arliamentary seats. e roblem with thesetwo strategies is that they look at articular actors (the individual Congressman,the government). Pitkin (1967: 216-225) has argued that reresentation should not

be seen as an activity o individual actors, but rather as a systemic roerty thatresults rom all actors behavior. n that ersective, we should not try to measurecongruence between voters and articular reresentatives or arties, but betweenthe electorate as a whole and arliament as a whole. tudies o such collective asoosed to dyadic reresentation are also relatively rare (e.g. Weissberg 1978).

A third roblem is th

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Martin Rosema Bas Denters Kees Aarts-How Democracy Works Political Representation and Policy Congruence in Modern Societies-Amsterdam University Press(2011)