Political parties and perceptual agreement: The influence of party related factors on voters’ perceptions in proportional electoral systems

Abstract

A normative ideal of political representation is that governmental policy should reflect the will of a majority of the voters. The responsible party model (RPM) emphasizes a number of conditions that must be fulfilled in order to achieve meaningful representation. The model presumes that parties will present stable and divergent policy programs – that is, prospective mandates – during election campaigns, thereby giving voters meaningful electoral choices. An underlying assumption that can be deduced from the RPM is that an electorate with clear and shared perceptions of the party space is an important prerequisite for successful political representation. This article is focused on how the extent of agreement in voters’ perceptions of parties’ policy positions is affected by: (1) the behavior of the parties in terms of the degree of stability and divergence in their policy positions and (2) the various party characteristics such as the electoral size, the age and the labels of the parties. The study is based on data from election studies in Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands with 26 parties covered in 35 elections. The results show that both the degree of stability and divergence in the parties’ left–right positions are of considerable importance for the perceptual agreement among voters, while electoral size of the parties has a negative effect. In contrast to the vast literature on voting behavior that emphasizes the role of well-informed and knowledgeable voters as an important ingredient in effective policy representation, this article shows that responsible parties that present stable and divergent policy positions are needed as well.