Policy Congruence Research Articles

Pathways to Substantive Representation: Policy Congruence and Policy Knowledge Among Canadian Local Politicians

Pathways to Substantive Representation: Policy Congruence and Policy Knowledge Among Canadian Local Politicians

Popular autocrats: why do voters support Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary? A quantitative analysis

AbstractAuthoritarian populism has become an increasingly prevalent subtype of hybrid regime and is characterized by weakened democratic institutions and a leader who relies on populist appeals. Authoritarian populist regimes limit citizens’ freedom, undermine accountability and the rule of law, and are likely to be more corrupt than democratic regimes. Nevertheless, certain authoritarian populist regimes appear to enjoy broad popular support. Based on the European Social Survey database and my calculations of respondents’ personal income tax rates, I investigate the factors that influenced voters’ support for Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary from 2010 to 2020, which may be considered an exemplary case of an autocratic populist regime. The analysis shows that voters’ support for the government was influenced by their perceptions of the economy and government performance, political beliefs (i.e., policy congruence and ideology), and basic human values (i.e., self-transcendence and conservation). By contrast, changes in voters’ individual economic conditions were not found to be associated with their support for the government. The findings indicate that, in addition to explanations of government support that specifically focus on hybrid regimes, economic voting theory, which originated from and has typically been applied in democratic contexts, also provides viable explanations for understanding support for authoritarian populist regimes. More broadly, the findings also lend support to the altruistic and expressive voter hypotheses.

Political mobilisation and socioeconomic inequality in policy congruence

AbstractIn recent years, scholars have observed that political parties’ policy positions frequently fit the preferences of well‐to‐do voters better than those of the less well‐to‐do; a phenomenon known as policy congruence inequality. While the existence of inequality in policy congruence is well‐established, we currently only have a modest understanding of the causes of it. We develop an argument proposing that the political mobilisation of citizens with low socioeconomic status (SES) both in the parliamentary channel, in the form of high turnout, and in the extra‐parliamentary channel, in the form of high union density, is pivotal. Both high turnout and union density force parties to pay more attention to the preferences of the disadvantaged, thereby creating lower policy congruence inequality. To test the argument, we have collected and harmonised election surveys and party manifestos covering 90 elections in Australia, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, covering several decades until today, yielding more than 120,000 voter–party dyads. Employing this new dataset, our results confirm that the political mobilisation of citizens with low SES is a strong predictor of policy congruence inequality. This finding nuances the conclusion of extant research by showing that low‐SES citizens are not always on the losing side politically. It also implies the important role of maintaining or maybe even increasing turnout and union membership among the disadvantaged in society. Places where either turnout or union density is slipping in these years are likely to witness further increases in policy congruence inequality in the years to come.

Securing Moral Authority: A Cross-National Analysis of Protestant Engagement in the Implementation of Morality Policies in Western Europe

Churches have a hard time defending their moral values in the political sphere of an ever more secular and liberal Western Europe. A largely neglected means of navigating this crisis is through the Church’s role as a charitable provider during the implementation of morality policies. This paper examines this type of church involvement from a cross-national and cross-sectoral perspective. We describe the activities of Protestant churches in four morality policy areas in three European countries: Germany, England, and Denmark. The variation in religious engagement observed in these areas and countries appear to be driven by the churches’ room to maneuver and their policy congruence with state goals, whereas governance capacities are secondary. Thus, the provision of social services can still serve as a means by which Protestant churches can exert moral authority, especially if these social services are related to moral issues.

The rhyme and reason of rebel support: exploring European voters’ attitudes toward dissident MPs

AbstractCitizens often support politicians who vote against their parties in parliament. They view rebels as offering better representation, appreciate expressive acts, take rebellion as a signal of standing up for constituents, or see rebels as defending their moral convictions. Each explanation has different implications for representation, but they have not yet been tested systematically against one another. We implement survey experiments on nationally representative samples in the UK, Germany, France, and Italy to assess whether voters treat rebellion as a cue for better representation or infer positive character traits implying a valence advantage. Policy congruence does not drive voters’ preference for rebels. However, voters do associate positive traits with rebel MPs, even if they do not feel better represented by them.

How Do Consociations Craft Asylum Policy? Lebanon’s Response to Conflict-Induced Displacement as an Exploratory Case

Abstract How do consociations craft their asylum policy, and how do they deal with the rights of “others”? Research has started to explore the relationship between consociational governance and non-ethnic or non-sectarian social groups. Yet, we still know little about how consociations interact with refugee flight on the one hand, and with the ethics of refugee protection on the other. As a form of thick institutional complexity, consociationalism risks limiting the ability of the state to respond to refugee displacement in a manner that is timely, effective, and which respects the rights and dignity of displaced individuals. We draw on Lebanon’s response to the arrival of some 1.5 million displaced individuals in the country since the start of Syria’s lethal conflict in 2011 as an exploratory case study that seeks to further knowledge on how consociations craft and implement their asylum policy. Specifically, we consider three mechanisms of immobilism that constrain the crafting of unified, responsive, and inclusive asylum policy and that are posed by the consociational state apparatus itself: ethnicization/sectarianization, procrastination, and fragmentation. Building on Lebanon’s patterns of refugee policymaking, we show how these mechanisms mutually reinforce one another, backfiring on policy congruence as well as refugee rights and protection.

The Rich Have a Slight Edge: Evidence from Comparative Data on Income-Based Inequality in Policy Congruence

AbstractSeveral recent studies have found unequal policy responsiveness, meaning that the policy preferences of high-income citizens are better reflected in implemented policies than the policy preferences of low-income citizens. This has been found mainly in a few studies from the US and a small number of single-country studies from Western Europe. However, there is a lack of comparative studies that stake out the terrain across a broader group of countries. We analyze survey data on the policy preferences of about 3,000 policy proposals from thirty European countries over nearly forty years, combined with information on whether each policy proposal was implemented or not. The results from the cross-country data confirm the general pattern from previous studies that policies supported by the rich are more likely to be implemented than those supported by the poor. We also test four explanations commonly found in the literature: whether unequal responsiveness is exacerbated by (a) high economic inequality, (b) the absence of campaign finance regulations, (c) low union density, and (d) low voter turnout.

The impact of corona populism: Empirical evidence from Austria and theory

I study the co-evolution between public opinion and party policy in situations of crises by investigating a policy U-turn of a major Austrian right-wing party (FPÖ) during the Covid-19 pandemic. My analysis suggests the existence of both i) a “Downsian” effect, which causes voters to adapt their party preferences based on policy congruence and ii) a “party identification” effect, which causes partisans to realign their policy preferences based on “their” party's platform. Specifically, I use individual-level panel data to show that i) “corona skeptical” voters who did not vote for the FPÖ in the pre-Covid-19 elections of 2019 were more likely to vote for the party after it embraced “corona populism”, and ii) beliefs of respondents who declared that they voted for the FPÖ in 2019 diverged from the rest of the population in three out of four health-related dimensions only after the turn, causing them to underestimate the threat posed by Covid-19 compared to the rest of the population. Using aggregate-level panel data, I study whether the turn has produced significant behavioral differences which could be observed in terms of reported cases and deaths per capita. Paradoxically, after the turn the FPÖ vote share is significantly positively correlated with deaths per capita, but not with the reported number of infections. I hypothesize that this can be traced back to a self-selection bias in testing, which causes a correlation between the number of “corona skeptics” and the share of unreported cases after the turn. I find empirical support for this hypothesis in individual-level data from a Covid-19 prevalence study that involves information about participants’ true vs. reported infection status. I finally study a simple heterogeneous mixing epidemiological model and show that a testing bias can indeed explain the apparent paradox of an increase in deaths without an increase in reported cases. My results can, among others, be used to enrich formal analyses regarding the co-evolution between voter and party behavior.

Immigration policy congruence and political trust: a cross-national analysis among 23 European countries

AbstractThis study examines how immigration policy impacts citizens’ trust in politicians and political institutions. The article argues that immigration policy affects political trust through policy congruence. More specifically, it claims that the level of restrictiveness of immigration policy impacts political trust heterogeneously, conditional on whether citizens are anti- or pro-immigration and additionally on how strongly citizens are seeking information about political issues, the latter making it potentially easier for them to identify policy (in-)congruencies. Combining country-level data on immigration policy outputs in European countries with individual-level data to complex multilevel models, the findings reveal that the level of congruence of immigration policy to citizens’ immigration preferences alone does not impact political trust. But they show that immigration policy impacts the political trust of citizens who are highly anti-immigration and at the same time very strongly seeking political information. Overall, however, the article concludes that the impact of immigration policy congruence on political trust is moderate at best.

How U.S. Voters Elect Prosecutors: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

Do U.S. voters care about the policy positions of a candidate when choosing prosecutors? Conventional wisdom suggests the public favors punitiveness and that prosecutorial elections are apolitical. I argue that voters do care about the policy positions of prosecutors, but different information environments induce different voting behaviors. Using a conjoint experiment across four information settings, I show how policy congruence plays an important role in shaping voter’s decisions when candidates’ policy information is available. When policy information is sparse, voters take cues to infer candidates’ political leanings even in nonpartisan or low-information electoral environments. Contrary to the dominant view that the public favors punitiveness, my results suggest that the public is not unequivocally harsh. These findings speak to the possible benefits that society can reap from increasing the level of information available in prosecutorial elections. The findings also call into question the prevalent view that elections ought to compel prosecutors to adopt tough-on-crime stances that result in a highly incarcerated populace.

Sympathy for the devil? Voter support for illiberal politicians

AbstractMany democracies are witnessing the rise and continuing success of parties and politicians who oppose fundamental principles of liberal democracy. Recent research finds that voters support illiberal politicians, because they trade off policy congruence against attitudes toward liberal democracy. Other studies, however, suggest that authoritarian and populist voters might actually have a preference to vote for illiberal candidates. We argue that both factors interact: Authoritarian and populist voters are more willing to trade off policy representation against support for liberal democracy. To test this mechanism, we rely on a survey experiment conducted in Germany. The results clearly demonstrate that voters indeed trade off policy congruence against liberal democracy. Moreover, this effect is particularly strong for populist and authoritarian voters. Overall, the results have important implications for understanding when and which voters support or oppose liberal democracy.

Guardians of Democracy or Passive Bystanders? A Conjoint Experiment on Elite Transgressions of Democratic Norms

Emerging literature shows that citizens in established democracies do not unconditionally support central democratic principles when asked to weigh them against co-partisanship or favored policy positions. However, these studies are conducted in highly polarized contexts, and it remains unclear whether the underlying mechanisms also operate in more consensual contexts. Furthermore, it is unclear whether “critical citizens” or satisfied democrats are more eager to support democratic principles. We study these questions with evidence from a conjoint experiment conducted in Finland ( n = 1030), an established democracy with high levels of democratic satisfaction and a consensual political culture. We examine how transgressions of two central democratic norms, the legitimacy of political opposition and the independence of the judiciary, affect leader favorability. We also explore how these differ across ideological and policy congruence and across levels of political disaffection. Our results show that some segments of the Finnish population are willing to condone authoritarian behavior if this brings them political benefits. Furthermore, we find that satisfied rather than “critical” citizens are more likely to sanction such behavior. These findings suggest that dangers of democratic deconsolidation may appear even in consensus democracies with relatively low levels of political polarization.

Do Citizens use Sociodemographic Characteristics as Cues to Infer Candidate Issue Positions?

AbstractIn open‐list proportional representation systems, choosing candidates based on issue proximity can improve policy congruence. However, in practice, voters may not know enough about individual candidates to do so. Hence, we examine whether voters infer individual positions from cues provided on ballots, namely age and residence. Studying the Swiss parliamentary elections of 2019, we focus on environmental policy, both a very salient issue and featuring considerable intra‐party heterogeneity of positions. We combine comprehensive candidate data with a representative voter survey and conduct a survey‐embedded experiment (N = 10,758). We find that citizens have indeed little knowledge of candidate positions. However, ballot cues predict policy differences among candidates within parties only to a limited extent, and the experiment does not suggest that voters use ballot information to predict positions directly. Instead, as suggested by additional analyses, citizens may perceive candidates who resemble their own sociodemographic profile as having positions closer to their own.

Shifting party goals: Party electoral support and legislative behavior in the majority and the minority

While scholars agree that parties are interested in both pragmatic (electoral) and programmatic (policy) goals, they disagree about the relative importance of those goals. How parties weight these goals has implications for the effect of party involvement on legislative behavior. We argue that parties emphasize these goals differently based on whether they are in the majority or minority. We examine links between party support in primary elections for the US Congress and subsequent legislative behaviors, finding that candidates who received more party support during the primary election were more likely to engage in partisan efforts in the next Congress. Further, party support of incoming legislators is linked to increased partisan behavior through leapfrog representation. We find that these relationships are stronger for majority party candidates, suggesting that parties put a greater emphasis on winning majorities when in the minority but a greater emphasis on policy congruence when in the majority.

Issue congruence between voters and parties: examining the Democratic Party mandate in Ireland

ABSTRACT Political parties often employ the rhetoric of electoral mandates, claiming that the people who voted for them endorsed their policies. However, the level of voter-party issue congruence may vary across parties, issues, and elections; and the views of certain types of voters may be better represented by their party than others. This paper puts forward a series of hypotheses to explain variation in issue congruence, relating to how well-informed voters are about party policy, the role of non-policy determinants of vote choice, and the nature of policy competition between parties. The hypotheses are tested using data from surveys of voters and parties conducted during the 2020 general election and the 2019 European Parliament election in Ireland. Congruence is found to be higher when a party is particularly associated with an issue. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, for whom non-policy attributes play a significant part in voters’ assessments, are found to have lower policy congruence with their voters overall than other parties. While there is no evidence that certain socio-demographic groups are systematically more or less well represented by their parties across all policy areas, some gaps in representation are identified, particularly in relation to so-called ‘cultural’ issues.

How national bioeconomy strategies address governance challenges arising from forest-related trade-offs

ABSTRACT The term ‘bioeconomy’ stands for an economy that primarily relies on renewable biotic resources and thus supports the vision of a low carbon society. The respective ‘bioeconomy strategies’ bear high conflict potential as they, sometimes unintentionally, rely on forest-land or wood as a resource, which are already appropriated also in other policies. We first outline the resulting governance challenges in terms of coherence of policy goals, consistency of instruments and the congruence between the two and identify trade-offs between forest ecosystem services that exhibit a high conflict potential regarding the bioeconomy. We then provide a comparative analysis of the extent to which bioeconomy strategies tackle the related governance challenges for two pairs of countries from the temperate (Germany and Switzerland) and the boreal (Sweden and Norway) forest zone. We find that the strategies do not mention conflicts related to wood mobilization. Coherence and consistency tend to be addressed for non-extractive forest utilizations that are perceived as a market opportunity rather than solely a restriction on wood mobilization. The latter seems more common in countries with a multi-functional forestry paradigm. Consequences for the prevailing forest management paradigm, however, are not explored in the strategies and thus policy congruence is neglected.

Reputation versus office: Why populist radical right governmental participation has differed between Sweden and Denmark

Sweden and Denmark have presented contrasting relationships between centre-right and populist radical right (PRR) parties. In Sweden, the centre-right has refused cooperation with the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) (SD), even when this cost the centre-right office. However, in Denmark, coalitions led by centre-right parties have cooperated with the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) (DF) on multiple occasions. Through a controlled comparison, we examine what explains these different outcomes. Using Chapel Hill Expert Surveys and public opinion data, we firstly look at the policy congruence between parties and the social acceptability of cooperation. We then examine interview material with representatives from centre-right and PRR parties in Sweden and Denmark to see their explanations of cooperation and non-cooperation. We conclude that, while the office goals of Danish centre-right parties, along with the policy focus and uncontroversial past of DF, explain that case, the reputation and past of SD has precluded a similar outcome.

The Role of Access Capacity of Business Actors in the “New Normal” Policy Congruence in Indonesia

In reducing the number of COVID-19 transmissions, the Government of Indonesia implemented a three-month social restriction policy. The social restriction caused shocks in the economic sector. This article analyzes the motivational factors that enable business people in Indonesia who are members of business organizations to use political party access and congruence to accelerate the "new normal" policy. The access capacity is related to business people's ability to reach political parties, while congruence can be seen from the level of their acceptance of policy outputs. This study develops a variable of access capacity consisting of political party membership, company scales, and the type of business organization. Data was gathered through an online survey using Google Forms to 147 business actors who are members of the national business group. By using logistic regression analysis at the individual level, we find that the scale of the company owned by a businessperson significantly influences her/his ability to access political party rather than passively following organizational policies. The company scale variable also considerably affects the acceptance of the "new normal" policy. Businessman membership in political parties only affects access capacity, but not policy congruence. In the context of COVID-19 in Indonesia, the increasing losses have an impact on accepting the "new normal" policy. This finding indicates that in general: only large companies owners can directly lobby their political representatives; pandemic, as a crisis situation, is an exception to produce congruent policies; capital is still the most powerful modality in the policy; and COVID-19 has had a significant impact on business people's incongruence with the "new normal" policy

Promoting a musical lifecourse towards sustainable ageing: A call for policy congruence

Today, individually perceived quality of life for a growing ageing population could be said to be significantly dependent on meaningful life experiences, social connectedness and a sense of purpose. In this article, we argue for a wider theorization of policy and the politics of ageing. The central aim is to reflect on understandings of ageing within music education and musical participation, and, in particular, shift the focus from active ageing – and the ways it might support the narrow agenda of music for older adults – to the potentials of holistic and sustainable learning and participation in music. To do so, we draw from the concept of policy congruence, presenting a vision of policy as a critical catalyst that may amplify parameters for concerted initiatives among multiple constituencies within music education. We argue these amplified parameters may afford renewed efforts towards transdisciplinary action that can support the actions of community musicians and strengthen their role as networked actors labouring in consonance with others in the growingly significant areas of lifelong learning and ageing populations. Our stance is that, if we can assume that music education and musical participation have a serious contribution to make in the lives and well being of individuals across the lifespan, including older adults, then we ought to consider how systematic policy engagement may actively contribute to appropriate allocation of resources and renewed pedagogical and organizational framings, which more directly use lifelong learning to support sustainable ageing.

Organised interests in the media and policy congruence: The contingent impact of the status quo

AbstractWhile a multitude of studies have investigated the link between opinion and policy, we have little knowledge of how and when organised interests affect this linkage. We argue that the alignment of organised interests affects opinion–policy congruence by influencing the weight decision‐makers attach to citizen preferences. Moreover, we propose that alignment between majorities of groups and the public matters the most when status quo bias must be overcome for the public to obtain its preferred policy. We test our theoretical claims drawing on a comprehensive media content analysis of 160 policy issues in Germany and Denmark. Our results present a more sceptical picture of the ability of groups to suppress the opinion–policy linkage than the one frequently presented in the academic literature and public debate. We find that the capacity of groups to affect whether policy is congruent with the majority of the public is restricted to situations where the public supports a change in the status quo. In these cases, policy is less likely to end up reflecting public opinion if the majority of interest groups do not support the public position. In cases where the public is supportive of the policy status quo, the position of interest groups does not affect the likelihood that policy will eventually reflect the preferred position of the public. Our findings expand existing knowledge of organised interests in the study of policy representation and have important implications for understanding democratic governance.