Theoretically, policy responsiveness through democratic representation would involve a) citizens electing their representatives, and b) these representatives making sure that most people would get what they want, at least on the whole. In practice, however, there may be many more sources of information, as well as expressions of opinion, to which representatives may listen. In this paper I aim to find to what extent policies respond to the preferences of different types of participants. While the system of representation is built on the principle of equality of votes, ‘protesters’ or ‘consumers’ might also have an influence through their prominence, even if they may be a minority. This is tested on a panel of European democracies between 2002 and 2012.
