Political Representation: Congruence of Interests in New Democracies

Modern democracies are based on the idea of party government through which political parties appear as the linkage mechanism that connects the voters’ preferences to the government outputs (Blondel and Cotta 2000). This system is built on the premise that governments enact policies that are congruent with the preferences of the citizenry. Therefore, the study of the way public officials represent the policy preferences of the electorate is key for the understanding of modern democratic processes. The analysis of political representation has been addressed from many different perspectives and has considered different dimensions (Manin 1997, Ryden 1996). The traditional classification proposed by Pitkin (1961), who considers that citizens are represented descriptively, symbolically and substantively, stands out. Since then, there has been a clear agreement on the importance of mandate representation which occurs “when politicians’ and voters’ interests coincide and/or when voters can reasonably expect that parties will do what they propose” (Manin, Przeworski, and Stokes 1999, 30). And as Achen (1978) points out, if the views of representatives and citizens are similar, then representation is improved. Therefore, modern ideas of political representation are linked to the model of party government according to which parties compete in elections offering distinct policy platforms for which they will be accountable (Schattschneider 1942, APSA 1950). Nonetheless, recent studies on new democracies point out a crisis of representation which is undermining the quality of democracy in several regions of the world (Hagopian 2005; Mainwaring et al 2006). Political systems seem to have failed to fulfill citizens’ expectations, which is producing a high and growing dissatisfaction with the main political institutions of representation. On the other hand, studies on politicians’ preferences have also pointed out the close relationship between quality of politicians and the quality of democracy (Alcántara 2008). A workshop addressing the extent to which public officials and political parties represent citizens’ policy preferences in new democracies will help us know if indeed representation is based on programmatic linkages between voters and parties, which leads to democratic accountability and responsiveness (Kistschelt 2000), or on personalism and individual candidate’s qualities which might lead to systems characterized by fragile party-society bonds, and non institutionalized forms of representation (Roberts 2002). This workshop seeks to attract scholars who are interested in the study of different dimensions regarding political representation, especially political congruence between citizens and public officials in New Democracies.