Elites' Ability to Represent Citizens

Contemporary democracies are facing deep challenges as more and more voices become critical of their institutions. Populism is on the rise, reflecting the growing discontent of citizens towards elites and mainstream political parties and public confidence in representative institutions is undermined (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2007; Armingeon and Guthmann 2013). As noted by Pitseys (2014: 63), surveys among citizens clearly provide evidence of a structural decline of confidence in political representation and institutions in general. Against this backdrop, it is crucial to study the linkage between citizens and representatives (Arnold and Franklin 2012). Political representation as a delegation mechanism essentially refers to a relationship between a representative and those represented by him or her (Pitkin 1967; Shapiro et al. 2010; Walczak & van der Brug 2012). This linkage can be studied through the concept of congruence. Indeed, policy congruence and policy responsiveness are central in democracies: they imply that elites act and decide according to public wishes (Andeweg 2011). But although it is clear that elites’ perceptions of citizens preferences are key to understand political action and to assess the quality of democracy (Miller and Stokes 1963), little attention has been paid recently to political congruence and more precisely, to the ability of elites to assess public wishes. There are numerous studies on political congruence based on the responsible party model in which voters are supposed to vote for the party closest to their preferences. Through analysis of party manifestos or voting behavior, scholars have sought to determine whether citizens’ preferences are represented in parliament on the main cleavages, at the national or European level (e.g. Arnold and Franklin 2012; Golder and Stramski 2010; Grose et al. 2015; Lefkofridi and Katsanidou 2014; Önnudottir 2014; Soroka and Wlezien 2010; Stadelmann et al. 2013; Rogers 2017). However, these studies do not make a direct link between elite's perceptions of voters' preference. In fact, only older studies inspired by the work of Miller and Stokes asked politicians about (their) voters' perceptions directly (Hedlund and Friesema 1972, Clausen 1977, Grandberg 1987, Holmberg 1999). As a result, we do not know much about whether and how political elites are able to make a reasonably accurate guess about what the people want or expect (with the recent exceptions of Belchior 2014 and Broockman and Skovron 2015). The aim of this workshop is therefore to investigate political congruence on various dimensions and its underlying mechanisms, including how elites get informed and processed information on citizens’ preferences. The following questions will be at the core of this workshop: To what extent do elected representatives have accurate perceptions of citizens’ preferences? How are they informed about those preferences? And how can we explain the variation in the level of accuracy in elites' perceptions? 1. Substantive policy congruence Parliaments are representative bodies that connect elected MPs and voters. Since the seminal studies by Miller & Stokes (1963) and Pitkin (1969), a very broad literature has focused on substantive representation. Sometimes also called ‘policy congruence’ or ‘policy responsiveness’ (Andeweg, 2011), substantive representation implies that MPs -- when putting policy issues on the agenda, deliberating, and legislating -- act according to the voters' wishes. A good deal of that work has found that actual policies in many countries correlate with public opinion, at least regarding the policy issues voters cares about the most (Soroka & Wlezien, 2010). But how does this ‘miracle’ of substantive representation come about? What are the mechanisms connecting (more or less perfectly) voters' wishes to policy decisions and legislative outputs? Within the large literature on substantive representation, only a small number of studies theorized about how democratic linkage may come about (Converse & Pierce, 1986 Belchior, 2014; Broockman & Skovron, 2015). Most of previous work has implicitly focused on elites’ willingness to get to know the population’s preferences. Another part of the literature has tackled whether elites are actually incorporating this knowledge about the public’s preferences when acting politically. But hardly any work has looked at a crucial third factor, namely elites’ ability to make a reasonably accurate guess about what the population may be expecting. This dimension is precisely the first focus of this workshop, which aims at examining to what extent elected MPs have correct perceptions regarding the policy preferences of the voters they represent, and to explain why some MPs hold more accurate perceptions than others. A small and older body of work specifically tackled elite’s perceptions of voters (Hedlund & Friesema, 1972; Clausen, 1977; Clausen, Holmberg, & deHaven-Smith, 1983; Granberg, 1987; Granberg & Holmberg, 2002; Holmberg, 1999). Notwithstanding a single study in the 2000s (Norris & Lovenduski, 2004), only recently the perceptual path of democratic linkage has been rediscovered in studies by Belchior (2014) in Portugal and by Broockman and Skovron (2015) in the US. The key finding is the reaffirmation of the fact that elites’ perceptions of public opinion are not very accurate. A number of factors have been found that explain this link. First, politicians are biased by "wishful thinking" (e.g. Holmberg, 1999). Uninformed about the actual opinions of voters, MPs rely on their own opinion about an issue and project it on voters. This work has also found that, in line with Miller & Stokes’ (1963) initial work, elites’ success in making sense of public opinion is unevenly distributed across issues. When issues are salient or ‘politically charged’ (Hedlund & Friesema, 1972) or when the public has homogeneous ideas (Clausen et al., 1983), MPs’ estimates are more accurate. A third factor is the political context: elites’ estimations are more accurate in systems that promote direct legislator-voter links (Clausen et al., 1983). While these findings mainly help us understand the overall low accuracy of politicians' judgment of the public opinion, the previous studies have not been successful in explaining the often substantial differences among elected MPs (Clausen et al., 1983; Holmberg, 2007). There is some recent evidence underling the relevance of further investigating this variation. Indeed, some studies did find that individual differences in accurately estimating the public’s wishes are correlated with ideology (Belchior, 2014), with representatives from centrist political parties being better able to read public opinion. And Broockman and Skovron (2015) show in more detail that, among US state legislature candidates, conservative candidates hold less accurate estimations compared to their more liberal counterparts. In sum, studies investigating and explaining MPs' estimations of voters' preferences are rare. However, there is a growing body of research projects and literature on this topic, not only in the US system but also across political systems. There is a general agreement that elites have biased perceptions, that they tend to project their own opinion on the electorate, and, especially, that there is a good deal of variation across MPs and across issues in elite estimations’ accuracy. Yet, a theoretical framework explaining why some MPs from some parties, with a particular ideology are better estimators on some issues than others is still missing. The goal of this workshop is thus to contribute to the development of such an encompassing theory and, ideally to test it drawing on novel and comparative data. 2. Economic inequalities and policy congruence One re-occurring issue that is investigated in the representation literature is that of inequalities. Next to addressing the more general question of how and why MPs hold accurate perceptions of their voters’ wishes or not, part of this workshop will be dedicated to one particular policy domain, inequalities. More specifically, the citizens and MPs perceptions of economic inequalities and, consequently, their demand for redistributive policies. Inequalities of income and wealth have been rising over the last decades, all around the world (Piketty 2014). If economic inequalities increase and if political elites are responsive, then one should expect more redistributive policies. However, empirical evidence shows quite the contrary: government in less unequal countries (e.g. Sweden) seem to redistribute more than government in more unequal countries (e.g. US), (Kenworthy & Pontusson, 2005; Iversen & Soskice, 2009). We observe a similar puzzling situation if we analyze within-country changes of redistributive policies over time: Indeed, elites (in advanced capitalist democracies) tend to implement more pro-rich policies despite increasing inequalities. According to Pontusson (2017), this raises the following question: "Why have democratically elected governments so rarely respond to rising inequality by engaging in new redistributive initiatives?". Electoral systems, party strategies and income bias in democratic representation are obviously key factors to explain who is represented, and to what extent policy decisions are biased towards the more affluent citizen preferences (e.g. Blais and Bodet 2006). At the same time, there is a nascent literature on the gap between the perceived and the objective income and wealth distribution, which shows that most citizens do not know much about their own ranking in income classes. A high level of inequalities misperception among citizens is indeed observed in many countries (e.g. Norton and Ariely 2011, Chambers et al. 2014, Cruces et al. 2013) These misperceptions are probably very relevant to explain citizens and elites preferences for redistributive policies (Giger 2017). This workshop aims at enriching this classical literature by looking at the ability of elites to perceive correctly the level of inequalities and citizens’ preferences with regards to policy change in this area. In other words, this workshop will try to assess and explain why some MPs make better estimations of economic inequalities than others, and look at the political consequences of these more or less accurate MPs perceptions on the congruence of distributive policies. 3. Procedural congruence: elites perceptions on institutional reforms The last dimension that this workshop aims at examining deals with procedural congruence. It refers to the procedures through which political decisions are made. As a reaction to citizens’ disenchantment with politics, potential solutions are put forward to overcome the shortcomings of representative democracy. Over the last decade, some have argued that the answer to the current challenges lies in institutional innovations that will facilitate new forms of political participation for citizens. In many countries, institutional experimentations are put in place, to combine representative democracy with other forms of democracy, be it mechanisms of direct democracy, deliberative processes, participative democracy, etc. Most of the literature concentrates on public opinion and citizens’ attitudes towards democracy as well as on the impact of those institutional reforms on citizens’ views and evaluations of democracy (Chambers 2003; Elster 1998, Peters 2016, Smith 2009). Recent studies have concentrated on what people want and on their perceptions of democracy (Ferrin and Kriesi 2016). For instance, Hibbins and Theiss-Morse (2002) analysed the preferences of citizens in the US and rebuffed the claims that the solution to the crisis of representative democracy lies in direct participation of the citizens. This research triggered some debates and many studies have been devoted to people’s perceptions of democracy as well as their expectations towards politicians (Bengtsson and Christensen 2016; Carman 2010, Neblo et al. 2010, Gabriel et al. 2011; Dageförde 2016; Webb 2013). However, no study has focused on politicians: how do these elites react to these institutional innovations? And do they know whether such changes, often aimed at increasing participation, actually reflect citizens’ preferences on that aspect of political life? The key for the quality of democracy is that the interest and preferences of citizens are represented in the decision-making (Dahl 1971). It’s undoubtedly important to understand citizens’ preferences. However, the vast majority of the literature hasn’t matched citizens’ democratic preferences with those of elites. And political elites are necessary for institutional re-forms and democratic innovations. Peoples’ preferences need to be understood, translated and implemented in policies, by politicians. And yet, we know so far very little on what they think about the causes of the crisis of representation and its potential remedies. Through the study of procedural congruence, the ambition is to examine to what extent do citizens and representatives think alike regarding the current democratic procedures and how they should be reformed? Examining this question is crucial as procedural congruence affects public support for representative democracy and representative institutions. While most citizens consider free and fair elections the most important hallmark of democracy (Hooghe, Marien, and Oser 2017), various studies show that, across contemporary democracies, a large share of the population is dissatisfied with the way the representative system works. And part of this dissatisfaction is rooted in citizens’ evaluation about how the system works (e.g. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002). Attempting to respond to the growing democratic malaise, political elites have in many countries proposed to reform political institutions. Politicians and political parties appear to believe that the cure to democratic resentment is to revise democratic institutions (and their own internal procedures). But we have no accurate account about whether these reforms are appropriate cures to the democratic malaise. Exploring congruence between political elites and citizens regarding how democracy should work and should be reformed is therefore essential. (list of references can be provided but due to space constraints it was not possible to include it here. Our apologies).