Representation in Europe: Policy Congruence between Citizens and Elites (REPCONG)

欧洲代表权：公民与​​精英之间的政策一致性（REPCONG）

• 批准号: 77084283
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Thomas Bräuninger
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl Political Economy
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2007-12-31 至 2011-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/77084283?language=en
• 关键词: Representation; Europe; Policy; Congruence; between

Representative democracy is premised on the notion that there should be a reasonable degree ofcongruence between the wishes of citizens and the priorities of those elected to represent them. Thequality of this ‘substantial’ representation is important, as it will affect citizens’ perception ofrepresentation and their attitudes toward representative democracy, more generally. In real worldrepresentative democracy, however, policy congruence between citizens and elites is partial forvarious reasons: representatives may deviate from what they promised when electoral sanctioning isunlikely, parties have informational advantages, or the nature of party competition in mass electionsdistorts the multi-dimensional character of citizen and party preferences. Yet, we know very little aboutthe actual extent, the determinants and consequences of policy congruence between citizens andelites in Europe, at the national or the European Union levels.The CRP will address these issues focussing on two sets of questions: Firstly, we explore thedeterminants of policy congruence and the impact of political institutions and direct democracy, inparticular. Secondly, we investigate how policy congruence impacts on the perception ofrepresentation, and the satisfaction with democracy as well as the perception of specificrepresentative institutions, such as national parliaments/governments and European institutions. Theempirical analysis uses data from various sources: European Social Survey (ESS) and ComparativeStudy of Electoral Systems (CSES) for information on individual citizens’ policy preferences andindividual perceptions of representation and attitudes toward democracy; national party manifestosand Euro-manifestos supplemented with data from an online survey amongst MPs and MEPs to obtaininformation on policy preferences of both ‘parties’ and ‘individuals’ as representatives. Techniquesfrom multi-level analysis are employed to reflect the multi-level nature of these data (individual, partyand system level).

代议制民主的理念是，公民的愿望和被选举代表他们的人的优先事项之间应该有合理程度的一致性。这种“实质性”代表的质量很重要，因为它会影响公民对代表的看法以及他们对代议制民主的态度。然而，在真实的代议制民主中，公民和精英之间的政策一致性是部分的，原因有很多：当选举制裁不可能时，代表可能会偏离他们所承诺的，政党拥有信息优势，或者大众选举中政党竞争的性质扭曲了公民和政党偏好的多维特征。然而，我们对欧洲国家或欧盟层面上公民和公民之间政策一致性的实际程度、决定因素和后果知之甚少。CRP将集中在两组问题上解决这些问题：首先，我们探讨政策一致性的决定因素以及政治制度和直接民主的影响。其次，我们研究了政策一致性如何影响对代表性的看法，以及对民主的满意度，以及对特定代表机构，如国家议会/政府和欧洲机构的看法。实证分析使用的数据来自不同的来源：欧洲社会调查（ESS）和选举制度的比较研究（CSES）的信息个人公民的政策偏好和个人的代表性和对民主的态度的看法;国家党宣言和欧洲-该宣言补充了议员和欧洲议会议员在线调查的数据，以获得有关“政党”和“个人”政策偏好的信息，各位代表。采用多层次分析的技术来反映这些数据的多层次性质（个人、政党和系统层次）。