Explaining MPs’ perceptions of voters’ positions in a party-mediated representation system

Belchior, Ana Maria

doi:10.1177/1354068811436046

Cited by 26 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…To date, we have only limited knowledge about this essential representative process of individual opinion formation by elected officials (for a similar argument, see Belchior 2014; Broockman and Skovron 2013; Miler 2007). To be sure, we do know that elected officials resort to different sources, like opinion polling (Geer 1996), mass media (Herbst 1998), contact with constituents (Fenno 1978), and different forms of advocacy (Burstein 2014) to gauge what the public wants.…”

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confidence: 99%

Demonstrating Power

Wouters

Walgrave

2017

Am Sociol Rev

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How do public opinion signals affect political representatives' opinion formation? To date, we have only limited knowledge about this essential representative process. In this article, we theorize and examine the signaling strength of one type of societal signal: protest. We do so by means of an innovative experiment conducted among Belgian national and regional politicians. Elected officials were exposed to manipulated television news items covering a protest demonstration. Following Tilly's previously untested WUNC claim, four features of the event were manipulated: the demonstrators' worthiness, unity, numerical strength, and commitment. We argue that these protest features present elected officials with useful cues about what (a segment of) the public wants. We find that these cues affect elected officials' beliefs. The salience they attach to the protest issue, the position they take, and their intended actions all change as a consequence of exposure. The size of a protest event (numbers) and whether the protesters agree among themselves (unity) are the most persuasive protest factors. The effects of the protest signals come on top of strong receiver effects. We find no evidence that elected officials' predispositions moderate the effects of the protest features.

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confidence: 99%

Demonstrating Power

Wouters

Walgrave

2017

Am Sociol Rev

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“…Some politicians are better equipped to know what their voters want than others, for example, depending on their understanding of their role as delegates or trustees (Erikson et al 1975;Hedlund and Friesema 1972). Moreover, there are systematic differences between parties (Belchior 2014;Broockman and Skovron 2018). However, no study to date has investigated the role of MPs' and parties' issue competence on perceptual accuracy, despite its centrality in broader research on political representation, voting, and legislative organisation.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Only a few studies inspired by the seminal article of Miller and Stokes (1963) have directly asked political elites about their perceptions of voters' preferences (Belchior 2014;Broockman and Skovron 2018;Clausen 1977;Converse and Pierce 1986;Grandberg 1985;Hedlund and Friesema 1972;Holmberg 1999;Kalla and Porter 2020). They show that MPs' perceptions of the electorate's opinion are generally not very accurate.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…They show that MPs' perceptions of the electorate's opinion are generally not very accurate. This misperception might be due to 'wishful thinking' , with MPs tending to project their own opinions onto voters (Holmberg 1999), to ideological orientation (Belchior 2014), to selective information sources such as vocal citizens and interest groups (Broockman and Skovron 2018;Pereira 2021; see also Hertel-Fernandez et al 2019 for a similar finding about the biased misperceptions of US Congressional staffers), or to the MPs' low receptivity of factual information about constituents' preferences (Kalla and Porter 2020). However, MPs' estimates become more accurate when voters have homogeneous preferences on the policy issue at stake (Clausen et al 1983) and when this issue is salient or 'politically charged' (Hedlund and Friesema 1972).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Understanding MPs’ perceptions of party voters’ opinion in Western democracies

Varone

Helfer

2021

West European Politics

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The ability of Members of Parliament (MPs) to know the policy preferences of their party voters is a precondition for substantive representation. This study investigates whether MPs' perceptions of their party voters' opinions are more accurate with policy statements on which they are competentnamely, those that are owned by their party and in which the MPs have specialised. It combines unique data from citizen surveys and face-to-face meetings with 367 MPs in Belgium, Canada, Germany and Switzerland. Both citizens and MPs evaluated the same statements, and MPs also estimated the support for each statement among their party voters. The comparison of party voters' preferences and MPs' estimations shows that MPs are more accurate on statements owned by their party, but not on issues they themselves specialise in through committee membership. Party issue ownership plays an important role in determining MPs' perceptual accuracy and, hence, democratic representation.

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“…Higher values of this variable thus indicate more ideological incongruence. Arguably, councillors’ estimates might not capture the “real” position of their national party on the left-right scale, as councillors may adapt party position to reflect their expectation or “wishful thinking” (Belchior, 2014: 407–409). However, there is a consensus in the literature that the measure of ideological congruence applied here captures the intention of local councillors to place themselves at the same or diverging position with their national party (Kölln and Polk, 2017: 21; Van Haute and Carty, 2012: 887), which is exactly the concept needed in the present study.…”

Section: Data and Operationalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intra-party conflict at grassroots: Party-councillor ideological congruence in Croatia

Kukec

2019

Party Politics

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Party-councillor ideological congruence reinforces party linkages with local voters and credibility of councillors as future party elites. This contribution examines the role of career motivations and selective incentives, as well as party branch characteristics in forming party-councillor congruence. The empirical analysis draws on the original survey of Croatian local councillors. The results find councillors with progressive ambition and those exposed to intra-branch competition reporting higher levels of ideological congruence with their parties, while no effect was found for holders of upper level party positions. Branch power has the opposite effect from expected. Party grassroots shape ideologically congruent professional politicians, but this function is challenged by shrinking supply of candidates.

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Explaining MPs’ perceptions of voters’ positions in a party-mediated representation system

Cited by 26 publications

References 22 publications

Demonstrating Power

Demonstrating Power

Understanding MPs’ perceptions of party voters’ opinion in Western democracies

Intra-party conflict at grassroots: Party-councillor ideological congruence in Croatia

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