Policy Agreement and Political Support

Équipe de recherche

• Emiliano GROSSMAN (Sciences Po, CEE and LIEPP)
• Mirjam DAGEFORDE (Sciences Po, CEE and LIEPP)

The project is supported by LIEPP since September 2015

Descriptif du projet

The reflection of citizens’ interests by policy-makers is a democratic requirement of modern states. The appreciation of policy outputs and outcomes depends on it. Due to declining trust and rising scepticism, the principle of democratic representation is challenged. For investigating its quality, scholars investigate congruence between citizens and parties mainly on the macro-level. Considering rising alienation, this project aims at investigating congruence from an individual perspective. Thus, we develop new concepts of party-voter agreement on the micro-level as indicators for the quality of democratic representation. Beside the distance between parties and voters, we consider the strength of political parties, the distribution among ideological blocks and the median mandate. The results of the project will illustrate how the demands of citizens are reflected in politics in different terms of congruence. Second, the project investigates how these concepts of congruence affect citizens’ attitudes towards politics. The results of the project will lead also to a publication in a LIEPP policy brief and an article in a peer-reviewed journal. Furthermore, the team considers to develop a follow-up project. This shall investigate agreement on distinct policy dimensions and their relevance for citizens’ satisfaction with politics. It makes a contribution to the wider research question in this axis, concerning how and why citizens approve or disapprove policy outputs our outcomes. To a certain extent, this project studies the preliminary stage of policy evaluation on behalf of citizens.

Poster of the project - June 2020