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

代议制民主的前提是，公民的愿望和当选代表他们的人的优先事项之间应该有一个合理程度的一致性。这种“实质性”代表权的质量很重要，因为它会影响公民对代表权的看法，以及他们对代议制民主的态度。然而，在现实世界的代议制民主中，由于各种原因，公民和精英之间的政策一致性是部分的：当选举制裁不太可能时，代表可能会偏离他们的承诺，政党有信息优势，或者在大规模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，在国家或欧盟层面，我们对欧洲公民和精英之间政策一致性的实际程度、决定因素和后果知之甚少。CRP将着重于两组问题来解决这些问题：首先，我们探讨政策一致性的决定因素，特别是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代议制的感知、对民主的满意度以及对特定代议制机构（如国家议会/政府和欧洲机构）的感知。实证分析使用了来自不同来源的数据：欧洲社会调查（ESS）和选举制度比较研究（CSES）的信息，以了解个人公民的政策偏好和个人对代表制的看法以及对民主的态度；国家政党宣言和欧盟宣言补充了国会议员和欧洲议会议员的在线调查数据，以获取“政党”和“个人”代表的政策偏好信息。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、团体和系统层面）。

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).