Congruence and Party Responsiveness in Europe: East and West

Do political parties in Europe respond to prior incongruences between themselves and voters? More generally, how does congruence relate to party responsiveness and does this differ between Eastern and Western Europe? Following recent advances in the literature (Golder and Ferland 2017), we examine two types of responsiveness and the relationship between them. First, we track if parties’ positions follows those of voters, e.g. if voters shift to the left, do parties follow them? Second, we also look at responsiveness in the form of trying to reduce already existing incongruences between the party and different electoral constituencies. Substantively, our analysis stresses differences in responsiveness to partisan and independent voters, and emphasises the importance of responsiveness to partisans for parties in Europe’s newer democracies. We make an additional empirical contribution by combining Chapel Hill Expert Survey and Europan Social Survey data for 24 countries in both Eastern and Western Europe for the period between 2002 and 2014. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of congruence and representation across European democracies.