Are opinion leaders better represented?

Abstract

Few studies have analysed the effect of political engagement on legislators’ responsiveness. This article focuses on opinion leaders defined as citizens who regularly discuss politics and who attempt to persuade others to change their viewpoint. It investigates whether opinion leaders are better represented compared to other voters. Taking advantage of the Swiss institution of direct democracy, the article combines roll-call votes and information from popular votes to compare the voting behaviour of legislators and citizens on exactly the same policy proposals. It thus overcomes limitations pertaining to the lack of identical information on elites’ and citizens’ preferences that is common in the literature. The findings show that opinion leaders are better represented than the rest of the electorate in those instances where both sub-groups disagree, and that issue salience does not increase responsiveness to rank-and-file voters. These findings have important implications for understanding unequal representation.