Ideological Congruence among European Political Parties

Abstract

Do European political parties represent the ideology of their voters well? This research aims to provide an empirical appreciation of the levels to which Members of Parliament (MPs) ideologically represent their electorate within political parties in 12 European countries. The variable used is left–right self-placement and representation is measured through congruence. Three main hypotheses are tested. First, MPs express greater ideological extremism than voters. Second, MPs have biased perceptions on the positioning of their electorate. Third, New Left parties exhibit higher levels of representation than the other parties. This article's findings reveal that only the second hypothesis can be supported without restrictions.

Keywords:

• political parties
• congruence
• left–right
• MPs
• voters

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank José M. Leite Viegas and the three anonymous referees for their helpful comments on the earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Notes

This view is generally supported by the literature (see for example: Thomassen and Andeweg 2004, pp. 48–49, 61).

The EES is based on national multi-stage probability samples and used face-to-face interviews. The universe in each country is the national resident population aged 15 years and older. The ECS was carried out by mail questionnaire addressed to MP candidates to the European Parliament in the 1994 European Parliament election. The overall return rate was 35 per cent. For more detailed information about these two studies see Schmitt and Thomassen (1999: Appendix) (these studies are available at the Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung – studies ZA3077 and ZA2865).

This is not an unusual problem in MP studies, but has important implications in the reading of the data (see for example one of the most important recent works on this subject: Schmitt and Thomassen 1999).

The Portuguese voters' survey was conducted in July 2006 and comprised a sample of 1001 eligible voters, 18–70 years old. Proportional quota sampling and face-to-face interviews were used. The MPs' survey was carried out in the first three months of 2007 using face-to-face interviews. The response rate corresponds to 34.3 per cent of the universe. In both studies, question wordings for Portugal are equivalent to these used in the European studies, except for party identification. The question for Portugal is: ‘Which party did you vote for (in the last National Parliamentary Elections)?’

The question for voters, is: ‘In political matters people talk of “the left” and “the right”. How would you place your views on this scale?’ (v114 – EES); and for MPs: ‘In political manners some people talk about “left” and “right”. Where would you place yourself?’ (v15_1 – ECS). A ten-point scale is used. The question for the identification of voters' party support is: ‘Which party would you be most likely to vote for (in 1994 European Elections)?’ (v16 – EES).

The questions are: ‘In political matters some people talk about “left” and “right”. How would you place yourself and others on this scale? Your position? Your party's voters? Your party's MPs?’ (v15 – ECS). A ten-point scale is used.