When are Decision-Making Procedures Accepted by the Elite? The Case of Referendums

Previous research has shown that the legitimacy of a majority-rule procedure, as perceived by the general population, is dependent on the properties of the procedure. In the case of a referendum, for instance, its legitimacy, as perceived by citizens, is conditional on the turnout, the size of majority, and the favourability of the outcome. However, we do not know whether those who actually will have to accept and implement such procedures, namely the political elite, have preferences that are aligned with the general population. To study this form of elite-citizen congruence, we take advantage of a survey distributed to all elected representatives in Norway (N = 4231) as well as a probability-based survey of the general population (N = 2595). We use EU membership referendum as a case of majority-rule and run conjoint survey experiments on both elected representatives and the population. The results show that citizens and elites are congruent in when they perceive a EU membership referendum to be legitimate. This has implications for our understanding of when and how decision-making procedures are implemented and followed.