The Effects of Congruence in Policy Priorities on Satisfaction with Democracy

Abstract

There is widespread agreement that better policy representation increases citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. Previous research on this topic has generally focused on ideological congruence between citizens and representatives. In this article, it is argued that public–elite agreement on policy priorities is another essential aspect of policy representation, but has been largely overlooked in this context. Citizens whose issue concerns are higher on elites’ agendas should be more satisfied with the functioning of democracy. This hypothesis is tested by linking voter survey data to candidate survey and news media content data from the 2009 German Longitudinal Election Study. The results show that citizens whose issue concerns are salient amongst party candidates and in the media campaign coverage are indeed more satisfied with democracy in their country. This effect exists not only for congruence with the party for which individuals voted, but also for agreement with the other parties.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2015.1064436.

Notes

1. All data used for the analyses in this paper can be obtained from GESIS (http://www.gesis.org/en/elections-home/gles/data-and-documents/).

2. The ‘MIP’ question has been quite controversial in the literature but is a suitable measure here (e.g. Johns 2010; Bartle and Laycock 2012; Jennings and Wlezien 2011). Wlezien criticises the term ‘problem’, stating that ‘[a]n issue is a problem if we are not getting the policy we want’ (2005, 559). However, citizens are unlikely to desire issues they do not consider problematic in some way to be high on the agenda. The confounding of ‘importance’ and ‘problem status’ is relevant when analysing aggregate policy priorities (2005, 561) but less so in this context because both factors are likely to increase individuals’ desire for a policy debate about the issue. Lastly, the inclusion of ‘currently’ in the question alleviates the problem of ambiguity with regard to the time frame (2005).

3. In Part B of the online appendix, I further discuss the rationale behind the weighting scheme and apply two alternative specifications. The results presented are robust to not weighting respondents’ priorities and to only taking the first priority into account.

4. Up to five issues occurring in respondents’ replies to each of the three MIP questions are included in the data. If multiple issues were mentioned, their salience scores are averaged.

5. Germans can cast two votes in federal elections – one for a constituency candidate and one for a party list. If respondents split their ticket between parties, I calculate the average of congruence with both parties.

6. Detailed information about all variables can be found in Part C of the online appendix.

7. Grouping economic, financial, and labour market issues into one category, as voters might perceive them as such, did not change the results.

8. Since economic issues are overwhelmingly salient amongst elites, citizens’ priority congruence levels are strongly dependent on the importance given to these issues. This means in principle that prioritising economic problems could be driving the results. While such a relationship is theoretically implausible, the finding that economic optimism has a positive effect on democratic satisfaction provides a further argument against it. Moreover, Reher's (2015) cross-national study shows that the link between priority congruence and satisfaction exists independently of whether economic issues were the most salient. Nevertheless, replicating the findings in a less economically tense context would represent a valuable robustness check.