Focus and style of representation in Portugal and Spain: Exploring the consequences of the economic crisis

To what extent has the economic crisis affected voters and MPs’ views on the roles of the legislators in Portugal and Spain? And how has the crisis affected the connection between the positions adopted by the electorate and its representatives? Most studies on MP-voter congruence have focused either on ideology or, although in a lesser extent, on policy issues (see eg. Dalton, 1985; Miller et al., 1999; Valen and Narud, 2007). Only seldom the analysis of the levels of congruence has been supported on the views of representation or the roles of the legislators (one exception is Belchior et al., 2016), and no relevant research has ever carried out comparative analysis on the consequences of an economic crisis on the views of representation of MPs and voters. Since the economic downturn is presumed to have had a substantial impact on the functioning of the political system, including the representation process and the views about it, this paper aims at contributing to fulfill that gap by investigating the representation roles (style and focus) of Portuguese and Spanish MPs before and after the emergence of the economic crisis in 2010, and looking at the corresponding levels of congruence between voters and MPs. The paper explores the relevance of party type (mainstream parties versus niche) and party’s ideology (left-wing versus right-wing parties) in the level of congruence within parties. By doing so we aim at contributing to the still ongoing discussion on the relevance of party type and party ideology for congruence (see eg. Holmberg, 1989; Iversen, 1994; Klingemann, 1995), and also to unveil the consequences of party compromise with the austerity measures that followed the emergence of the crisis in both countries (mainly mainstream right-wing parties) on the linkage towards their voters with regards to the views on the legislators’ roles. We support the analysis on a many-¬to‐many measure of congruence (Golder and Stramski, 2010), using data on both countries MPs and voters’ positions regarding the roles of representation (style and focus). This strategy is rather recent and scarcely used, being considered an improvement over previous measurements of MP-voter linkage (Andeweg, 2011). The research uses data of national projects encompassing fully comparable questions across countries and actors (MPs and voters).