Politicians as Party Hacks: Party Loyalty and Public Distrust in Politicians

Abstract

Public distrust in politicians is widespread across Western democracies. This general pattern suggests that the problem not only reflects dissatisfaction with government performance and misconduct-the main focus in existing research-but also how democratic politics is generally conducted. This article identifies a mismatch between the representation facilitated by modern democracies and the representation wanted by a majority of citizens. Because political representation is organized around cohesive parties, several institutions incentivize politicians to exhibit loyalty to party policy over other considerations (partisan representation). Observational and experimental data from three countries demonstrate that citizens generally perceive politicians as conducting partisan representation, but they prefer that politicians follow their own conscience (trustee representation) and constituency (delegate representation) over party policy. This mismatch translates into distrust in politicians, even in countries with strong norms for party discipline and among politicians' own party supporters. The findings have implications for understanding and counteracting political distrust.

Mismatched Preferences for Responsiveness: Danish Voters and Politicians

“…Politicians prefer party responsiveness, while voters have more mixed preferences with a small majority preferring constituency responsiveness. Other studies have shown that voters that perceive such mismatch have lower political trust (Bøggild 2020) and support of democracy (André & Depauw 2017). However, no studies have shown this mismatch in the Danish case or investigated possible reasons behind such mismatch.…”

“…While the study of politicians' representative styles is widespread, it has only gradually been recognised that voters hold meaningful opinions regarding which type of representative styles they prefer (Méndez‐Lago & Martínez 2002; Andeweg & Thomassen 2005; Carman 2006; Bengtsson & Wass 2010) and that these preferences matter for voters' perceptions and support of democracy (André & Depauw 2017), political institutions (Kimball & Patterson 1997), political decisions (Esaiasson et al 2017) and politicians (Bøggild 2020). Few have therefore tried to connect these two lines of research empirically as well as theoretically.…”

Transnational solidarity among political elites: what determines support for financial redistribution within the EU in times of crisis?

“…Citizens, on the one hand, influence the supplyside, but citizens' preferences are also shaped and structured by demand-side actors (for instance Druckman et al, 2013;Hobolt and de Vries, 2015). Politicians, on the other hand, set the party's political course, but in return must also adapt their stances and behavior, i.e., they follow the prescribed party discipline (Bøggild, 2020). At the same time, parties form governments and thereby shape policies, which are supposed to represent the interests of their voters, but without a doubt have an impact on the society at large.…”

Citizens as Complicits: Distrust in Politicians and Biased Social Dissemination of Political Information

“…Trust in politicians is low across many countries, even in contexts where government performance is high and scandals are absent (Bøggild 2020;Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2001). This general, cross-national trend has led scholars to look beyond government performance and scandals for more generic and stable explanations for public distrust in politicians.…”