Ideological Congruence and Electoral Institutions

Abstract

Although the literature examining the relationship between ideological congruence and electoral rules is quite large, relatively little attention has been paid to how congruence should be conceptualized. As we demonstrate, empirical results regarding ideological congruence can depend on exactly how scholars conceptualize and measure it. In addition to clarifying various aspects of how scholars currently conceptualize congruence, we introduce a new conceptualization and measure of congruence that captures a long tradition in democratic theory emphasizing the ideal of having a legislature that accurately reflects the preferences of the citizenry as a whole. Our new measure is the direct counterpart for congruence of the voteseat disproportionality measures so heavily used in comparative studies of representation. Using particularly appropriate data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we find that governments in proportional democracies are not substantively more congruent than those in majoritarian democracies. Proportional democracies are, however, characterized by more representative legislatures.A re representatives in some democracies more congruent with the ideological preferences of the people than those in other democracies? A large number of studies have examined the relationship between ideological congruence and electoral institutions (Blais and . Most have found that democracies employing proportional representation (PR) electoral rules produce more ideological congruence between citizens and their representatives than democracies employing majoritarian ones. This literature, however, has paid relatively little attention to how ideological congruence should be conceptualized.To date, the predominant way to conceptualize and measure citizen-representative congruence is in terms of the absolute ideological distance between the median citizen and the government. However, this is just one of

The Democratic Effect of Direct Democracy

“…Two literatures approach the study of policy congruence from different angles. First, representation scholars argue that the overlap between the preferences of the electorate and those of the political elite is the key driver of policy congruence (Miller and Stokes, 1963;Golder and Stramski, 2010). Second, the literature on direct democracy argues that referendums and initiatives are conducive for policy congruence because voters are supposed to get what they want when they can participate in policy making (Gerber, 1996;Matsusaka, 2010).…”

El poder político en España

“…A esto último, lo llamamos representación substantiva (Pitkin, 1976) y es una medida de la congruencia entre las preferencias políticas de los representantes políticos y las de la sociedad en su conjunto. En términos generales, y aun soslayando las dificultades metodológicas en el estudio de la congruencia ideológica (Golder y Stramski, 2010), podemos decir que el grado de congruencia entre las posiciones ideológicas de los electores y los representantes es elevada, tanto a nivel general (la congruencia en la escala izquierda-derecha) como a nivel de las preferencias por políticas concretas (la congruencia en preferencias por redistribución, impuestos o gasto público). A pesar de ello, existen dos matices que merecen ser destacados.…”

How electoral systems affect MPs’ positions

“…In a series of recent articles (e.g. Dow, 2001; Blais and Bodet, 2006;Ezrow, 2007;Ezrow, 2008;Warwick, 2009;Golder and Stramski, 2010;Powell, 2010) a debate has emerged on how congruence between citizens and their representatives (MPs, parties, and governments) should be measured and whether and how this congruence depends on the electoral system.…”

“…Concurring with Golder and Stramski (2010) we emphasize that in studies on congruence the exact type of relationship to be studied needs to be clearly defined. As Blais and Bodet (2006) argue the first and important relationship in this context is the relationship between voters and MPs.…”

“…1 The contributions of Blais and Bodet (2006) and Golder and Stramski (2010) nicely distinguish between the relationship between citizens and party positions, respectively different types of congruence.…”