Do parties become equally responsive in times of economic crisis? An analysis of the congruence between public opinion and parties’ position in Western Europe

Responsiveness is a core element of democracy: elected officials must respond equally to all citizens’ demands (Dahl 1971:1). Existing studies confirm that, overall, political elites are responsive towards citizen’s demands, and that a change in such demands is followed by changes in public policy (Erikson, MacKuen, y Stimson 2002; Page y Shapiro 1983; Persson 2021). However, regarding the redistribution of the wealth, a paradox emerges regarding responsiveness: following the models of political economy, the interest of poor citizens is to maximize the degree of redistribution of the wealth (Meltzer y Richard 1981), but if there are more poor citizens than rich ones and parties seek to maximize votes, why a full redistribution of the wealth does not happen? This paradox has been addressed from two different perspectives: the first has to do with redistributive preferences, which are not shaped exclusively by material self-interest, but also by multiple non-material factors, and therefore not all low-income citizens support redistribution (Alesina y Giuliano 2009; Rueda y Stegmueller 2019). The second has to do with the fact that responsiveness is unequal: policy changes more following the opinion of upper-class citizens than lower-class ones, which can be explained by elements such as the higher influence on politics due to money or the fact that among policymakers there is an over-representation of upper-class citizens, which leads to take measures more skewed towards the opinions of such social classes (Bartels 2009; Elsässer, Hense, y Schäfer 2021; Gilens 2012). However, I argue that responsiveness will become less unequal in times of economic crisis. In such periods, the combination of the increase of material needs, that leads to a higher redistributive preference among those who suffer it (Margalit 2013; Owens y Pedulla 2014), of the higher saliency of social needs (Kam y Nam 2008:227) and of the overall increase of knowledge about the macroeconomic situation (Marinova y Anduiza 2020) will make economic issues more decisive for citizens’ vote choice, therefore forcing political parties to reduce the gap between their positions regarding redistribution and citizens’ ones, in order to keep their votes. For that purpose, I run an analysis using a comprehensive dataset combining rounds 1 to 10 of the European Social Survey for measuring the attitudes of West European citizens, the Comparative Manifesto Project (Volkens et al. 2021) and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey to measure parties’ positions, and data from Eurostat and the International Monetary Fund for the evolution of unemployment, inequality and GDP.