Political disengagement is one of the defining challenges of our time, with multiple theories as to why the public continues to drift away from democracy and the political system. Stefanie Reher argues that one factor in advanced democracies is the perceived inability of the political class to pay attention to the actual opinions and concerns of those who elect them

Reher, Stefanie

LSE Research Online

democraticaudit.com http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=11953By Democratic Audit UKAs long as politicians continue to ignore the concerns of thepublic, satisfaction with democracy will continue to declinePolitical disengagement is one of the defining challenges of our time, with multiple theories as to why the publiccontinues to drift away from democracy and the political system. Stefanie Reher argues that one factor inadvanced democracies is the perceived inability of the political class to pay attention to the actual opinions andconcerns of those who elect them. Credit: Herr Olsen, CC BY NC 2.0Over the past decades, citizens across many democratic countries have become increasingly dissatisfied with theway their political systems are working. Anti-government protests, declining electoral participation and partyaffiliation, and support for extremist and populist parties are further manifestations of this trend. One potentialcause of declining satisfaction with democracy, which is often brought up in the public debate, is a failure ofpoliticians to pay sufficient attention the issues that the public is concerned about.However, whether this link exists had until recently not been empirically shown. Is citizens’ satisfaction with theirdemocratic system really influenced by politicians’ attention to their policy priorities? And, if yes, does thisrelationship apply universally, or does it depend on a country’s political context? These are the questions that Isought to answer in an article that recently appeared in the European Journal of Political Research.A number of previous studies suggest that the policy offerings of political parties and governments do indeedmatter to citizens’ political attitudes. People tend to be more satisfied with the way democracy works in theircountry if political elites’ ideological views are more similar to their own. However, political ideology is a verybroad and inclusive measure of political preferences. Voters and parties may hold similar views on the left-rightdimension – and they may even agree on what should be done about specific issues, such as nuclear energy orimmigration – while completely disagreeing on which issues should be on the political agenda.Yet, agendas are of crucial importance, because time and attention are limited in the policy-making process. Thisforces political decision-makers to prioritise between different political aims and decide which ones to pursuewhen in government. Issues that do not make it onto their agendas are unlikely to be debated in parliament andlegislated on. It may thus happen that the positions propagated by political elites on particular policy issues areperfectly in line with public opinion, but that issues around which the political debate revolves and on whichdecisions are made are deemed unimportant by the public, while the issues that the people consider most urgentare neglected. Agreement between citizens and elites on which issues should be on the policy agenda is thus aprerequisite for policy to be responsive to public opinion. Consequently, we should expect citizens whose policyconcerns are high on political elites’ agendas to be more satisfied with the representative process and, as a result,with democracy.In order to test this hypothesis, I draw upon data from the 2009 European Election Study, which was collected bythe PIREDEU project and includes a voter survey and a survey conducted among candidates running in theEuropean Parliament election in each of the 27 European Union countries. Both citizens and candidates wereasked “What do you think is the most/second most/third most important problem facing [country] today?” Linkingthe data from the two surveys allows me to determine how important the issue concerns of each respondent in thevoter survey were considered by the political elites in her country. I call this variable priority congruence.Analysing these data, I find my first hypothesis confirmed: Citizens whose policy priorities are more similar toelites’ priorities tend to be more satisfied with the functioning of democracy in their country. However, whenlooking at each country separately, I observe substantial variation in the strength, and even in the existence, ofthis relationship. In order to uncover the causes of this variation, it is necessary to take a closer look at the causalmechanisms implied by the hypothesis, and to think about their applicability to different political, historical, andcultural contexts.The mediating factor that I assume to link democratic satisfaction to priority congruence is the quality of policyrepresentation. Since policy representation is a key element of modern democratic systems, we might expect it toplay a role in citizens’ evaluation of the functioning of democracy. However, previous research reveals substantialdifferences in people’s understandings of what democracy means across countries. In newer democracies, theytend to define it more in terms of rights, institutions, and benefits than in terms of processes, such asrepresentation. In Postcommunist societies in particular, people might still link their political to their economicexpectations, since the transition to democracy and to a market economy occurred simultaneously. Thesecountries are the youngest democracies in the EU. Thus, we may find that elites’ representation of citizens’ policypriorities has a weaker effect of satisfaction with democracy in newer democracies.A second factor that may play a role is the quality of democracy. In countries where fundamental aspects andnecessary conditions of democracy, such as freedom of speech and free and fair elections, are wanting, citizensmay base their evaluation of their political system more on these basic criteria than on the quality of agendarepresentation. In addition, citizens in these countries might believe that the elites are trying to promote their owninterests rather than the good of society, even if their policy priorities are congruent. Consequently, suchcongruence might not be seen as a sign of a functioning democracy in deficient democracies.The analysis offers support for these arguments. The relationship between congruence in policy priorities andsatisfaction with democracy is stronger in older democracies and in countries such as Sweden and the UK, whichscore high on the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, a measure of the quality of democracy andgovernance. It is much lower, if not non-existent, in new democracies and those with a lower quality of democracyand governance, like Romania or Lithuania. I furthermore find that both the link between the priority congruenceand perceptions of the quality of representation, and between perceptions of representation and satisfaction withdemocracy are stronger in countries with more democratic experience.What can we draw from these findings? It seems that citizens have meaningful opinions about what should be onpolicy-makers’ agendas and that they are aware of what is in on their agendas. In older democracies and incountries where democratic and governance institutions are functioning, people use this information to judge howwell the representation process and democracy are working. In countries with less experience with democracy,other criteria of democracy seem to receive more attention by citizens.The frequently encountered claim that the publics in established democracies have become more dissatisfiedbecause of politicians’ neglecting their concerns might thus be valid, although longitudinal data is necessary toconfirm whether there the gap between the public’s and elites’ policy agendas has indeed grown. Pointingtowards this possibility are the increasing constraints that governments are facing when deciding which problemsto tackle, which come with increasing international integration. This is particularly relevant in Europe: On manyissues, national governments have ceded their competencies to the EU institutions and are thus unable to putthese issues on their policy agendas.This also means that advising national elites to pay more attention to citizens’ policy concerns in order to avoiddissatisfaction and other consequences, such as support of anti-democratic groups and declining electoralparticipation, is only useful to a limited extent. Potential solutions include increasing the public awareness of thedivision of policy competencies between the different levels of governance and improving the democraticlegitimacy of supra- and international policy-making bodies. Whether this could alleviate the risk of increasingdissatisfaction with democracy remains to be explored.—Note: This article gives the views of the authors only, and not the position of the Democratic Audit UK, nor of theLondon School of Economics, or of the LSE Public Policy Group. Please read our comments policy beforeposting. —Stefanie Reher recently finished her DPhil at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford andcurrently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen. 

As long as politicians continue to ignore the concerns of the public, satisfaction with democracy will continue to decline

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