Synching Representation: The Effects of Bottom-Up Direct Democratic Institutions on Government Responsiveness

As contemporary democracies function largely through the mechanism of representation, many studies have examined the link between what citizens want and what they get. Mostly focusing on the US, scholars have established that a general responsiveness tends to exist. However, we know much less about the conditions that aid or constraint responsiveness. We examine representation in Europe, and argue that more direct institutions of democracy helps to synch public policies to public preferences. This study analyzes a time-series cross-sectional data including 26 European countries in order to test this expectation. Conditioning the relation between social policy preferences and social spending on bottom-up institutions of direct democracy as well as the use of referendums, we find that citizen initiatives and the frequency of referendums increase government responsiveness in terms of social policies.