Recently, the concept of congruence is applied continuously as a means for evaluating representation, whereas the implicit assumption is: The higher the congruence between political actors and the electorate, the better representation works. The initial design of congruence was established by Miller and Stokes (1963) who measured policy-congruence between US-Congressmen and their constituencies. The design was adapted in a plethora of studies, mostly applying the left-right-scale instead of policy-positions. In the last decade the impact of electoral systems on congruence was the most relevant topic concerning congruence (e.g. Budge and McDonald 2007; Huber and Powell 1994; Powell 2006; Golder and Stramski 2010; Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2012), whereas parties become more relevant instead of MPs. Moreover, the applied methods become more sophisticated.
Despite of testing new models to explain congruence (Belchior 2012) and theoretical as well as methodological advancements (Golder and Stramski 2010, Kernell 2012), there is lack of exploring the effect of congruence. Thus, I will remain to the underlying assumption of congruence and test the normative statement (the higher the congruence, the better representation works) empirically. In doing so, I relate congruence to the evaluation of representation made by the “ultimate principal” (Strøm 2000) – the citizens. In the past few decades, students of legislatures and representation have generally neglected the citizens’ perspective on representation and factors of influence; recently, studies that integrate them re-enter the field.
Considering both gaps, I will explore the effects of congruence between European citizens and political parties and elaborate whether party-voter agreement fosters good representation from the citizens’ perspective. When conducting a European comparison, I take into account institutional factors.
The data will be drawn from EES (2009) and CITREP (2010). The sample size for each country is 1.000/1.500.
