Public Opinion, Turnout and Social Policy: A Comparative Analysis of Policy Congruence in European Liberal Democracies

Abstract

According to democratic theory, policy responsiveness is a key characteristic of democratic government: citizens’ preferences should affect policy outcomes. Empirically, however, the connection between public opinion and policy is not self-evident and is increasingly challenged. Using an originally constructed data set with information from 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries between 1980 and 2014, our research design allows for a comprehensive investigation of the linkages between ideological positions of citizens, parliaments and cabinets on one hand, and redistributive policies in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries on the other hand. We find that the role of the cabinet is more important than that of parliament. Although citizens’ left–right positions do not have an effect (directly or indirectly) on the level of social expenditure, there is a connection between mass preferences and the ideological position of parliament and government in high-turnout contexts.

Policy responsiveness to all citizens or only to voters? A longitudinal analysis of policy responsiveness in OECD countries

“…The literature on this topic has many entries, and we refer the reader to the work of Golder and Ferland (2018) for a more comprehensive review of the literature. Many studies have focused on the ideological positions of government, and the extent to which these are correlated to the median voter position (Best et al 2012;McDonald & Budge 2005;Powell 2000), or citizens' preferences (Blais & Bodet 2006;Ferland 2016;Hooghe et al 2019;Warwick 2016).…”

“…Others have used indicators of spending as a dependent variable, to capture the very end of Powell's chain of representation. Using measures of government spending to gauge public policy, it has been investigated whether spending patterns reflect the spending preferences of citizens (Hooghe et al 2019;Soroka & Wlezien 2010) or the ideological position of the electorate (Kang & Powell 2010). Many parts of the chain in Figure 1 have thus been covered, and particular attention has been given to investigating whether electoral rules can strengthen or weaken connections in the chain (Blais & Bodet 2006;Ferland 2016;Kang & Powell 2010).…”

Party preference representation

“…Such work, however, has to make tough decisions about which issues to take into account or which ideological dimensions to consider for measuring congruence. As a result, most previous studies either focus on the correspondence between public opinion and the government’s or parliament’s position along the left-right dimension (Golder and Lloyd, 2014; Golder and Stramski, 2010), or they investigate congruence in a specific policy domain, such as welfare spending (Hooghe et al, 2019; Kang and Powell, 2010). When studying these questions comparatively, such an approach has two kinds of limitations.…”

Politics and Inequality in Comparative Perspective: A Research Agenda

“…Structured inequalities within instances of decision making, along with myriad informal decision-making procedures that elites conduct behind the scenes, contribute heavily to why democracy's political outcomes-across nations, time, and decisionmaking bodies-are unequal (Gilens, 2012;Lefkofridi & Giger, 2020;Maks-Solomon & Rigby, 2019;Wright & Rigby, 2020). This situation is sharper in some contexts and less so in others (Hooghe et al, 2019). Thus, we see political inequality as, conceptually, on a continuum.…”