download - UvA DARE

More documents

Recommendations

Info

extremes on the scale are used more often by voters than by MPs, and we see that, on average, MPs are to be found to the Left of the voters. These two aspects are also common, and not only in the Netherlands in that particular period: they can be seen in all five figures. The overlap between the two distributions (the shaded area in the figures: the common area under the curve) was 60 percent in 1972 and 55 percent in 1977/1979: in other words, policy congruence was just over halfway between no congruence and perfect congruence. If we now look at the more recent comparisons, we see that policy congruence consistently improves over the years: roughly ten years later, in 1989/1990, the overlap between the two distributions is 64 percent, or almost two-thirds policy congruence. Again ten years later, in 1998/2001 the overlap has increased further, and policy congruence is above three-quarters. Finally, in 2006 policy congruence is almost perfect, at 89 percent. In less than a third of a century, policy congruence between Dutch voters and MPs has increased from just over half to two thirds to three-quarters to nearly perfect! 3.3 Characteristics of dynamic representation In terms of dynamic representation it is interesting to note that the voters have not contributed much to this rather impressive improvement: After the 1970s, the multi-modal distribution was replaced by a uni-modal distribution, but since then the changes have been marginal. (Do note that in terms of curve shape analysis congruence has not changed after the 1970s, whereas the common area under the curve has increased). Parliament on the other hand has clearly moved closer to the electorate. In 1979, the mode for MPs was at a rather Leftist point ‘2’ on the 7-point scale; by 2006 it had moved to a centrist point ‘4’, coinciding with the mode of the voters. In the terms of Esaiasson and Holmberg: it is a case of ‘representation from below’ rather than of ‘representation from above’ (Esaiasson and Holmberg 1996; Holmberg 1999b). In studies of dynamic representation, two mechanisms are generally distinguished: ‘replacement’ in which voters replace their representatives with more congruent ones, and ‘rational anticipation’ in which incumbent representatives adapt their position to that of their voters in order to avoid defeat in the next elections (Stimson et al. 1995). Instead of rational anticipation, the same effect can result from representatives having a role conception of a ‘delegate’ rather than of a ‘trustee’ (Miller and Stokes 1963), but the difference between rational choice and normative institutionalism need not concern us here. In our case, greater congruence can have resulted from the replacement in elections of Leftist MPs (parties) with more Right-wing MPs (parties); it is intriguing that the near-perfect congruence in 2006 occurred after the entry of new Populist Right parties in parliament. However, congruence can also have improved because the MPs of incumbent parties have adapted their preferences to those of their voters, either in rational anticipation, or because they feel they ought to do so. In order to see whether established parties APProAchIng Perfect PolIcy congruence / 47
also adapted to public opinion, I have compared the distribution of a party’s MPs over the Left-Right scale with the distribution of that party’s voters. For smaller parties with only a handful of MPs, one can hardly speak of a ‘distribution’, and comparison with the voters’ distribution does not make much sense. For that reason, the analysis is confined to parties with relatively sizeable parliamentary party groups at all five points in time. These are the three established parties: Labour (PvdA), the Christian Democrats (CDA), and the Conservative Liberals (VVD). Table 3.1 Left-Right intra-party policy congruence between voters and MPs over time (common area under the curve as %); 1972-2006 1972/1972 1977/1979 1989/1990 1998/2001 2006/2006 Christian Democrats (CDA) 47.3 40.2 66.0 76.1 82.1 Conservative Liberals (VVD) 77.5 55.4 32.9 76.5 85.9 Labour (PvdA) 53.2 52.9 52.3 51.4 68.0 The overlap between the distributions of these parties MPs and their respective electorates is presented in Table 3.1. Initially, policy congruence declined for all three major parties in the 1970s. Since the 1970s the parties show different patterns. For the Christian Democrats the development of intra-party congruence is as consistent as the increase in overall congruence: in 2006 policy congruence had doubled compared to what it was in 1977/1979. Congruence between Conservative Liberal MPs and their party’s voters was exceptionally high in 1972 and first dropped to less than a third in 1989/1990, but has picked up since paralleling overall congruence. The situation within the Labour Party is different: policy congruence between Labour MPs and Labour voters is relatively low at all five points in time. If it changed at all between 1972 and 1998/2001 it decreased ever so slightly, only to increase in 2006. However, for all three parties the most recent congruence figures are highest. Even with the different pattern for Labour, it is clear that replacement of parties is not the only explanation for the improvement in policy congruence: the incumbent parliamentary party groups also resemble their voters more than they did before. This finding is reinforced by a change in the role conceptions of Dutch MPs. When asked in 1972 what an MP should do if she had a different view on a particular issue than her party’s voters, 71 percent opted for the role of ‘trustee’, answering that the MP should follow her own opinion in such cases. Only 7 percent chose the role of ‘delegate’, advocating that the MP should follow her party’s voters, with the remaining 22 percent answering that ‘it depends’: the role of the ‘politico.’ By 2001 the percentage of trustees had dropped to 40 percent (slightly rising to 49 percent in 2006), with 21 percent delegates and 40 percent politicos (dropping slightly to 31 percent in 2006) (Andeweg and Thomassen 2007: 16). The most likely cause of this increased congruence and this shift towards more responsive AndeWeg / 48
Page 1 and 2: how Democracy works Political Repre
Page 4 and 5: how Democracy works Political Repre
Page 6 and 7: Preface / 7 tAble of contents / 5 T
Page 8 and 9: Preface There are many good reasons
Page 10 and 11: 1 How Democracy Works An Introducti
Page 12 and 13: tion to the advocates of participat
Page 14 and 15: democracy has not increased accordi
Page 16 and 17: is weakest for the model that is do
Page 18: citizens do not blindly hold govern
Page 22 and 23: 2 The Dynamics of Political Represe
Page 24 and 25: tors elected from the district, and
Page 26 and 27: ship appears ineffective, voters ma
Page 28 and 29: Previous analyses show that almost
Page 30 and 31: ernments. Leftist publics generally
Page 32 and 33: ingly different from the previous f
Page 34 and 35: mean that when voters do change cou
Page 36 and 37: or the German SDP under Gerhard Sch
Page 38 and 39: data are valuable, especially for t
Page 40 and 41: 3 Approaching Perfect Policy Congru
Page 42 and 43: example, in most countries is const
Page 44 and 45: y subtracting the percentage of MPs
Page 46 and 47: . 1977/1979 % 50 40 30 20 10 0 cong
Page 50 and 51: ole models is simply the increase i
Page 52 and 53: Table 3.2 Collective policy congrue
Page 54 and 55: 4 Dynamic Representation from Above
Page 56 and 57: 4.2 From opinion to policy A new re
Page 58 and 59: very idealistic picture of the rela
Page 60 and 61: Comment: The respondents were asked
Page 62 and 63: efugees into Sweden or granting Tur
Page 64 and 65: Figure 4.1 Within-party agreement b
Page 66 and 67: in the same direction, we speak of
Page 68 and 69: Inspecting the results for the part
Page 70 and 71: Figure 4.2 Dynamic opinion represen
Page 72 and 73: % % % 100 80 60 40 20 0 100 80 60 4
Page 74 and 75: voters is as high as 81 percent. Th
Page 76 and 77: as well as among MPs, but most clea
Page 78 and 79: 5 Is Governing Becoming more Conten
Page 80 and 81: Belgium and the Netherlands, as wel
Page 82 and 83: that the vote for outgoing governme
Page 84 and 85: cent in the period from the 1950s t
Page 86 and 87: The results of a simple over-time t
Page 88: Part II The Citizen Perspective
Page 91 and 92: concluded that this is so because m
Page 93 and 94: This assumption is informed by the
Page 95 and 96: 6.2.2 Why a focus on ‘substantive
Page 97 and 98: on whether respondents prefer democ
Page 99 and 100:
Table 6.1 Substantive supply (effec
Page 101 and 102:
Sarsfield 2007). Doing so enables o
Page 103 and 104:
Figure 6.4 Democratic preferences a
Page 105 and 106:
causal mechanism and demonstrate it
Page 107 and 108:
intrinsic democratic preferences. B
Page 109 and 110:
Table 6.4 Examining the demand acti
Page 111 and 112:
Figure 6.7 Expressive actions as a
Page 113 and 114:
democracy by depreciating instituti
Page 115 and 116:
modeling (Bryk and Raudenbusch 2002
Page 117 and 118:
eyond discontent with particular de
Page 119 and 120:
ack to autocracy (Zakaria 1997; Car
Page 121 and 122:
general, as well as multiple measur
Page 123 and 124:
nomic forums. It examines the exten
Page 125 and 126:
Figure 7.1 Democratic experience an
Page 127 and 128:
faction than any of the other demog
Page 129 and 130:
even well-informed and attentive ci
Page 131 and 132:
Table 7.3 Policy performance indice
Page 133 and 134:
Figure 7.3 Satisfaction with democr
Page 135 and 136:
outcome and impact of specific gove
Page 138 and 139:
8 Citizens’ Views about Good Loca
Page 140 and 141:
sions (Thomassen 1995: 386). In the
Page 142 and 143:
11 that the municipality provides s
Page 144 and 145:
importance to three of the four dim
Page 146 and 147:
4 New Kids on the Block (those born
Page 148 and 149:
Figure 8.2 An analytical model rega
Page 150 and 151:
Table 8.3 OLS regression results fo
Page 152 and 153:
Table 8.5 OLS regression results fo
Page 154 and 155:
in particular situations inasmuch a
Page 156 and 157:
Appendix: Operationalization of var
Page 158 and 159:
Political confidence Political conf
Page 160 and 161:
9 Patterns of Party Evaluations Kee
Page 162 and 163:
voters in directional theory is not
Page 164 and 165:
function of the distance between th
Page 166 and 167:
preference curves. For the same sit
Page 168 and 169:
est, party support curves will be u
Page 170 and 171:
mum occurs where the first derivati
Page 172 and 173:
Figure 9.5 Party support curves in
Page 174 and 175:
Table 9.2 Elections and the relevan
Page 176 and 177:
Table 9.3 Curvature and peaks in pa
Page 178 and 179:
Figure 9.8 Party position and linea
Page 180:
It appears that no model of party s
Page 184 and 185:
10 The Electoral Consequences of Lo
Page 186 and 187:
ly large parties, and in particular
Page 188 and 189:
form of a predicted value from an e
Page 190 and 191:
if turnout had been at the level of
Page 192 and 193:
Table 10.1 Turnout effects in the 2
Page 194 and 195:
ment/opposition status or party siz
Page 196 and 197:
voters. This very fact might presen
Page 198 and 199:
4 This is demonstrated by many vote
Page 200 and 201:
11 Assessing the Quality of Europea
Page 202 and 203:
view of democracy one would adhere,
Page 204 and 205:
study of political representation i
Page 206 and 207:
logical division between left and r
Page 208 and 209:
One might argue that this measure f
Page 210 and 211:
Figure 11.3 Political parties’ po
Page 212 and 213:
strong Euroskepticism is expressed
Page 214 and 215:
The final factor that we consider i
Page 216 and 217:
wing than oneself and the percentag
Page 218 and 219:
ties that best represent their poli
Page 220:
tions then become virtually identic
Page 224 and 225:
12 The Impact of the Economic Crisi
Page 226 and 227:
12.2 “I’m doing fine” A first
Page 228 and 229:
Figure 12.3 Satisfaction with econo
Page 230 and 231:
Figure 12.4 Happiness in Germany, 2
Page 232 and 233:
Table 12.1 Changes in satisfaction,
Page 234 and 235:
the feeling of satisfaction with th
Page 236 and 237:
noted. Apparently especially males
Page 238 and 239:
of the economic crisis of the 1970s
Page 240 and 241:
13 The Changing Macro Context of No
Page 242 and 243:
the official name, the Government P
Page 244 and 245:
13.3 Empirical analysis Political b
Page 246 and 247:
in this respect has been clarity of
Page 248 and 249:
welfare issues (Aardal 2003). Indee
Page 250 and 251:
Figure 13.4 Voters’ attitudes tow
Page 252 and 253:
Figure 13.5 The popular support of
Page 254 and 255:
espondents indicated this view, whe
Page 256:
with two assertions they came up wi
Page 259 and 260:
(Expertise centre for urban affairs
Page 261 and 262:
Welzel, Christian Professor of Poli
Page 263 and 264:
Thomassen, J.J.A., Aarts, C.W.A.M.,
Page 265 and 266:
Thomassen, J.J.A., and Van Deth, J.
Page 267 and 268:
Kickert (Eds.), Governance in Moder
Page 269 and 270:
Aarts, C.W.A.M., and Thomassen, J.J
Page 271 and 272:
Andeweg, R.B., and Thomassen, J.J.A
Page 273 and 274:
Scores for the Dimensions. Vienna:
Page 275 and 276:
J.R. Montero and A. Westholm (Eds.)
Page 277 and 278:
(Eds.), Choosing Europe? The Europe
Page 279 and 280:
Hobolt, S.B., and Klemmensen, R. (2
Page 281 and 282:
Kaufmann, D., Kraay, A., and Mastru
Page 283 and 284:
Macdonald, S.E., Listhaug, O., and
Page 285 and 286:
Mueller, D.C. (1989). Public Choice
Page 287 and 288:
Powell, G.B. (2009). The ideologica
Page 289 and 290:
Scharpf, F. (1999). Governing in Eu
Page 291 and 292:
Thomassen, J.J.A. (1983). Relatieve
Page 293 and 294:
Europa im Zeitalter der Entgrenzung
Page 296:
In How Democracy Works: Political R
show all

download - UvA DARE

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?