Do Politicians Feel the Electoral Pressure? A Cross-National Comparison of MP's Electoral Threat Assessment

Theorizing about why politicians respond differently to the public’s desires, scholars have put forward two explanations; ability and willingness. Regarding the former, evidence shows that public opinion information is not equally available to politicians, making it more difficult for some to adequately assess, and respond to, the public’s preferences (e.g. Belchior 2014; Esaiasson and Holmberg 2017). Regarding the latter, a large strand of literature has theorized about the role of electoral pressures in incentivizing politicians to be responsive, arguing that elites’ perceptions of citizens’ accountability behavior at the ballot are crucial for anticipatory representation to bring about responsive policies (see Mayhew 1974); as long as politicians feel the weight of voter monitoring, they are incentivized (at least to a certain extent) to be responsive to the public. What we do not know, however, is whether politicians actually do feel the electoral threat in reality. That is why the current study empirically examines elites’ electoral threat assessment by surveying 815 members of parliament in Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, The Netherlands and Germany. Do they feel that citizens will hold them accountable at the ballot box? And how can we explain variation among citizens, parties and countries? These questions will be tackled in the present study.