The Oxford Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies 9780198825081, 0198825080

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   

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 18/6/2020, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 18/6/2020, SPi

    ................................................................................................................................................................................................

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES ................................................................................................................................................................................................

Edited by

ROBERT ROHRSCHNEIDER and

JACQUES THOMASSEN

1

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford,  , United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press  The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in  Impression:  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press  Madison Avenue, New York, NY , United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number:  ISBN –––– Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon,   Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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P ......................................

T Handbook has been in the making for quite a long time. It started with a few discussions in academic year – when Robert visited the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. After completing other projects, we spent many hours on Skype in the fall of  to outline the conceptual framework for the Handbook. Needless to say, we have accumulated a great debt over the years. We are grateful to the authors of the various chapters for their patience and endurance and their willingness to respond to several rounds of queries and comments. As always, Dominic Byatt at Oxford University Press was a supportive and encouraging editor at all stages of the project. Céline Louasli guided us smoothly through the final stages of the process and Jen Hinchliffe meticulously copyedited the entire volume. We both had the privilege to be inspired by, and to work together with, some of the best scholars in this field. Robert has had the good fortune to arrive as a graduate student at Florida State University in  when Russell Dalton initiated much of his research on political parties and public opinion, which culminated in several leading representation studies. For over three decades, Russ’s work has inspired Robert in his own research. Robert also learned a huge amount from his long-term collaborator Stephen Whitefield. This book would not have been possible if it had not been for these two scholars and friends. Finally, Robert would also like to acknowledge the support he received from the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies for inviting him to spend an academic year in academic bliss. Jacques Thomassen learned the ropes of political representation research at the University of Michigan in the late s and early s as an assistant study director to Philip Converse and Roy Pierce who then were working on their monumental Political Representation in France. His dissertation research was based on a study of political representation in the Netherlands, initiated by Warren Miller. Therefore, ‘Michigan’ has been formative for his academic career. Of the many academic brothers and sisters in arms he had the privilege to work with over the years, in the field of political representation his recurring collaboration with Sören Holmberg has the longest history. He and Hans-Dieter Klingemann participated in almost all of the many projects of comparative political research Jacques has been involved in over the years.

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C .............................................

List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors

Introduction: Political Representation in Liberal Democracies

xi xiii xv 

R R  J T

P A R T I C O N C E P T S AN D T H E O R I E S O F POLITICAL REPRESENTATION . The Evolution of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies: Concepts and Practices



J M

. The Formation and Development of Liberal Democracies



C B, W H,  A K

. The Cultural Pre-Requisites of Democracy



C W

. The Institutional Framework of Representative Democracy: Comparing the Populist-Majoritarian and the Liberal/Consensual Model



R B. A  T L

. Electoral Integrity



C  H

PART II EL ITE O RIENTA TIONS A N D B E H AVIOUR . Roll-Call Voting Behaviour in Legislatures



S H

. Constituency Candidates and Political Representation T Z



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viii



PART III DESCRIPTIVE REPRESENTATION . Descriptive Representation Revisited



A P

. Gender Equality



K C  S E

. Regional and Ethnic Minorities



D R

. Sortition and Mini-Publics: A Different Kind of Representation



D M. F  P S

P A R T I V P A R T Y GO V E R N M E N T A N D RE P R E S E N T A T I O N . The Model of Party Government



R S. K

. Party Competition and Representation



R J. D

. Party Government and Voters



W   B, E H,  J  S

. Parliamentarians and Party Groups: The Role of Intra-Party Unity



R Y. H  R I-M

. Intra-Party Democracy and Representation: Necessity, Complement, or Challenge?



T P  S E. S

. Parties’ Election Manifestos and Public Policies



R T

. Opinion–Policy Congruence



Z L

. Mandate versus Accountability G. B P, J



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

. Political Equality and Turnout

ix



A´ B, R D,  F K

. Feeling Represented



S¨ H

PART V BEYOND ELECTIONS AS INSTRUMENTS OF R E P RE S E N T A T I V E DE M OC R A C Y . Referendums and Direct Democracy



C´ C  H K

. Interest Groups and the Market for Representation



J R

. Non-electoral Participation



J W.  D

. Dynamic Representation



C W

PART VI CHALLENGES TO REPRESENTATIVE DE MOCRACY: DOMESTIC ORIG IN S . Non-majoritarian Institutions and Representation



M B  T S

. Print, Electronic, and Social Media and the Transformation of Democratic Representation



M P, A D,  T N. T

P A R T V I I C H A L L E N G E S TO R E P R E S E N T A T I V E DEMOCRACIES: POPULISM . The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracies



P N

. The Rise of Populism in Modern Democracies T M. M  M W



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x



. Populists in Power: Populism and Representation in Illiberal Democracies



Z E  S W

P A R T V I I I C H A L L E N G E S TO RE P R E S E N T A T I V E D E M O C R A C Y : I N T E R N A T I O N A L AS P E C T S . Globalization, Electoral Change, and Representation



T H

. Representation and the European Union



S B. H

. Does Economic and Political Integration Undermine Representative Democracy? Lessons from the  Economic Crisis in the European Union



J M. F  P C. M ~

. Globalization and Representative Democracy: Normative Challenges



R B

Index of Names General Index

 

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L  F .......................................................................

. The Chain of Representation . Proportion of Democracies in the World, –

 

. Annual Number of Transitions to Democracy, –



. Annual Number of Democratic Breakdowns, –



. Annual Probability of Democratic Transition by Income



. Annual Probability of Democratic Breakdown by Income



. Predicted Effects of Income on Transitions



. Predicted Effects of Income on Breakdowns



. Development, Inequality and Democracy



. An Orientation’s Link to Democracy as a Function of its Link to Emancipative Values



. The Effect of Emancipative Values on Subjective Notions and Estimations of Democracy



. Regime Change-vs.-Stability as a Function of Accrued Regime–Culture Misfits



. Growing Class Polarization in a Two-Dimensional Cleavage Space



. The Electoral Cycle



. Election Integrity by Region Over Time –



. Election Integrity in Established Democracies (–)



. Challenges to Electoral Integrity in Established Democracies (–)



. Party Voters and Party Positions on Left–Right Scale



. Aggregate Correlates of the Representation Gap on Left–Right Scale



. Party-level Correlates of the Representation Gap on Left–Right Scale



. H Coefficient by Cohort



. Correlation with Self-reported Left–Right Scale, by Cohort



. H Coefficient by Region



. Correlation with Self-reported Left–Right Scale, by Region



. Agreement Score, by Cohort and Region



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  

. Marginal Effect of Ideological Distance on Vote Choice, by Cohort and Region



. A Sequential Multi-stage Model of Party Unity: Agreement, Loyalty, and Discipline



. The Fulfilment of Campaign Pledges from Manifestos by Country and Government-type



. Ireland in : Similar Large Parties and Consequences of Very Large Anti-incumbent Vote (%) (Accountability) in 



. Spain in  and  Polarized Parties: Two Large Parties Quite Far Apart and Consequences of Very Large Anti-incumbent Vote (Accountability)–% in 



. Stylized Examples of the Impact of the Decline in Turnout



. The Changing Policy Style: The Decline in Representation



. A Taxonomy of Political Activists



. Importance of Living in a Democracy



. Support for Democratic Beliefs Among Different Groups of Participants



. Vote Share for Populist Parties in Western Societies, –



. Trends in Democratization Worldwide, FH –



. Trust in Representative Institutions, EU –



. The Rise of Populism in Advanced Industrial Democracies



. Issue Opinions on Income Redistribution and Homosexual Lifestyle in  Countries,  and 



. Issue Opinions and Economic Globalization in  Countries, –



. Marginal Effects of Individual Attributes on Policy Constraints across the Range of Economic Globalization



. Marginal Effects of Individual Attributes on Who Influences Government Actions



. Paths of Representation in the European Union



. Satisfaction with Democracy in the EU and in Own Country



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L  T ...................................................................

. Number of Country-Years by Historical Period and Income Quintile (in the World Income Distribution) and their Proportion in each Quintile by Historical Period



. Percentage of Democratic Country-Years by Historical Period and Income Quintile, with Democracy Defined by Proportion of Male Individuals Enfranchised



. Percentage of Democratic Country-Years by Historical Period and Income Quintile, with Democracy Defined by Proportion of Male and Female Individuals Enfranchised



. Testing Causality Between Income and Democracy, –



. Two Traditions of Representative Democracy: An Overview



. Percentage of Women in Lower or Single Houses in Liberal Democracies



. Types of Mini-Public



. The Citizens’ Assemblies



. H Coefficients of the Three Issue Dimensions, by Wave



. Correlation with Self-reported Left–Right Scale, by Wave



. The Feeling of Being Represented by a Party or Party Leader Amongst Citizens in  Countries and  Elections



. The Feeling of Being Represented Amongst Citizens in Old and New Established Democracies, in Emerging Democracies, and in Authoritarian Regimes



. The Feeling of Being Represented Amongst Citizens in Countries with Different Electoral Systems



. The Difference in the Feeling of Being Represented Between Social Groups



. The Difference in the Feeling of Being Represented Between Political Groups



. Multilevel Regression Analyses of the Impact of System- and Individual-Level Characteristics on Citizens’ Perceptions of Being Policy Represented by a Political Party in Their Own Country



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  

. Features of Various Groups of Participants



. Globalization, Exposure to World Markets, and Policy Constraints



. Modelling Perceptions of Who Influences Government Policy



. Satisfaction with Democracy in the EU by Country



. Dimensions of Global Representation



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L  C ......................................................................................................

Rudy B. Andeweg is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Leiden University. Richard Bellamy is Professor of Political Science at University College London (UCL), University of London. André Blais is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Montreal. Carles Boix is the Robert Garrett Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the Director of the Institutions and Political Economy Research Group at the University of Barcelona. Mark Bovens is Professor of Public Administration at the Utrecht University School of Governance. Karen Celis is Research Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and co-director of RHEA Research Centre Gender, Diversity, Intersectionality. Céline Colombo is a Senior Researcher in the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. Russell J. Dalton is a Research Professor at the Center for the Study of Democracy, UC Irvine. Ruth Dassonneville is Assistant Professor and holds a Canada Research Chair in Electoral Democracy at the University of Montreal. Alexander Denison is a Ph.D. candidate in the doctoral programme of Political Science at the University of Kentucky. Zsolt Enyedi is Professor of Political Science and Pro-Rector at Central European University. Silvia Erzeel is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. David M. Farrell, MRIA, holds the Chair of Politics at University College Dublin. Jorge M. Fernandes is a post-doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. Eelco Harteveld is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam.

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  

Reuven Y. Hazan is a Professor and Chair in Israeli Democracy and Politics in the Department of Political Science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Timothy Hellwig is Professor of Political Science and Academic Director of the Europe Gateway at Indiana University. Sara B. Hobolt is the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Sören Holmberg is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Will Horne is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics, Princeton University. Simon Hug is Professor of Political Science at the University of Geneva. Reut Itzkovitch-Malka is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication at The Open University of Israel. Richard S. Katz is Professor of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University. Alex Kerchner is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics, Princeton University. Filip Kostelka is Lecturer in Government at the University of Essex. Hanspeter Kriesi holds the Stein Rokkan Chair of Comparative Politics at the European University Institute. Zoe Lefkofridi is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Salzburg. Tom Louwerse is Associate Professor of Political Science at Leiden University. Pedro C. Magalhães is Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon. Jane Mansbridge is Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at the Harvard Kennedy School. Thomas M. Meyer is Professor of Political Science at Humboldt University, Berlin. Pippa Norris is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Harvard University. Mark Peffley is Professor of Political Science and University Research Professor at the University of Kentucky. Anne Phillips is the Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics. Thomas Poguntke is Professor of Comparative Politics and Director of the Düsseldorf Party Research Institute (PRuF) at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf. G. Bingham Powell, Jr is the Marie C. and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester.

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Jeremy Richardson is Emeritus Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and Adjunct Professor at The National Centre for Research on Europe, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Robert Rohrschneider is Sir Robert Worcester Distinguished Professor of International Public Opinion and Survey Research at the University of Kansas. Didier Ruedin is a Senior Researcher at the University of Neuchâtel and a Research Associate at the University of the Witwatersrand. Susan E. Scarrow is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. Thomas Schillemans is Professor of Public Governance: Accountability, Behavior and Institutions, at the Utrecht University School of Governance. Peter Stone is Associate Professor of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin. Travis N. Taylor is a Ph.D. candidate in the doctoral programme of Political Science at the University of Kentucky. Jacques Thomassen is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Twente. Robert Thomson is Professor of Political Science at Monash University. Wouter van der Brug is Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. Jan W. van Deth is Emeritus Professor of Political Science and International Comparative Research at the University of Mannheim (Germany). Carolien van Ham is Professor of Political Science at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Jaap van Slageren is a PhD candidate at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. Markus Wagner is Professor of Quantitative Party and Election Research at the University of Vienna, Austria. Christian Welzel is Political Culture Research Professor at Leuphana University in Lueneburg, Germany, and director of research at the National Research University/ Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. Stephen Whitefield is Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. Christopher Wlezien is Hogg Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Thomas Zittel is Professor of Comparative Politics at Goethe-University Frankfurt.

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 Political Representation in Liberal Democracies ......................................................................................................................

    

T objective of the Oxford Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies is to assess comprehensively how well the interests and preferences of mass publics become represented by the institutions of liberal democracies. By liberal democracies we refer to the institutional practices as they have evolved in Western democracies since the early nineteenth century where periodic elections safeguarded by a canon of liberties and rights authorize representatives to make decisions for those residing within nation-states. Our focus means that we do not consider representation in ‘illiberal’ democracies or autocracies, which would require the space of a separate volume. We delimited the focus of the Handbook because, even within these confines, an overarching assessment of the quality of representation in advanced democracies constitutes a huge task. It requires that we consider the normative acceptance and possible decline of the idea of representation over time, their institutional manifestation as practised in Western democracies, the changing acceptance of these institutions among mass publics and the rise of new divisions among them, the performance of parties as the main agents of representation, the current challenges launched by populist parties, and the growing globalization and integration of economies. The contributors to this Handbook examine a specific aspect of this long list of ‘must-analyse’ because it became clear to us early on that only if we examine these perspectives together will we have a chance to take stock of the quality of representation in liberal democracies. No single book can possibly examine the entirety of the complex web that constitutes the way representation works, the performance of all actors, when it works best, and what factors impede it. However, a handbook provides us with the space to examine sufficiently diverse aspects so we can inch closer to a ‘big picture’ assessment of the state of representation in liberal democracies at this historical juncture. In order to provide the motivation for the thirty-four chapters in this Handbook, we will first introduce the ‘chain of representation’ which, over the past century, has encoded the idea of representation as organized in liberal democracies. The second

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

    

part will highlight the organizational principles of the Handbook. In a third section, we will point to three broad challenges that reflect the overarching assessment the chapters imply for the current quality of representation in liberal democracies.

T C  P R

.................................................................................................................................. The unifying theme among the contributions to this Handbook is that they shed light on how well various parts of the ‘chain of representation’ work (Figure .). The chain of representation institutes what Dahl (: xvii) once called ‘one of the greatest and most unexpected social discoveries that man has ever stumbled upon’. It inaugurates a ‘system of managing the major political conflicts of a society by allowing one or more opposition parties to compete with the governing parties for votes in elections and in parliament’. Thus, just as Schumpeter () envisioned, competition constitutes the linchpin of politics in liberal democracies. The chain of representation connects citizens’ interests and preferences to public policies via competing parties that vie for governing offices on the basis of the main political divisions extant in a society. Victorious governing parties but also defeated opposition parties channel alternative policy visions into national institutions in the post-election context. Ultimately, the outcome of party competition shapes public policy in light of the preferences of citizens, and citizens adjust their attitudes in light of the policy outcomes, and the way actors behave. However, the ease with which we can schematically depict the chain of representation obscures its complexities. For each step only works if a number of assumptions hold. These assumptions concern the preference formation of citizens (stage ), the choice set offered by political parties (stage ), the way institutions and parties collaborate in forming governments and deciding policies (stages  to ), and how citizens respond to them. As the volume makes plain throughout, there are good reasons to ask whether the chain meets the challenges each set of assumptions implies. Thus, the one overarching question guiding this Handbook is: have the building blocks of the chain of representation become so fragile that it is in jeopardy of failure? Collectively, the essays in this volume provide information about the way liberal democracies currently work, where they work well, where they may fall short, and what the main challenges are for the future of liberal democracy. The overarching conclusion is that the chain currently works surprisingly well. Surprisingly because there is a large literature documenting the ‘crisis in democracy’ of which the chain is an 1

2

Citizen’s Political Parties Preferences

3 Parliaments

4 Governments

 . The Chain of Representation

5 Policies

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

integral part. But the chapters also identify several areas of concern that must be redressed in order to avoid a substantial decline in the capacity of the chain to represent citizens via parties.

T O   H

.................................................................................................................................. We organized the Handbook in seven conceptual parts, where each chapter addresses an aspect that we deemed central to a broader concept. Part I of the Handbook provides an overview of the normative and historical foundation of the idea of representation (Mansbridge, Chapter ), its empirical manifestations in liberal democracies (Boix, Horne, and Kerchner, Chapter ), the cultural preconditions under which they can function properly (Welzel, Chapter ), the main institutional manifestations within the universe of liberal democracies (Andeweg and Louwerse, Chapter ), and the extent of their electoral integrity (Van Ham, Chapter ). Parts II–IV examine how well various assumptions of the chain reflect reality. Part II examines the individual-level orientations of elite (Hug, Chapter ) and their behaviour during election campaigns (Zittel, Chapter ). Part III takes on the issue of ‘descriptive’ representation: to what extent can the interests of citizens be channelled into liberal institutions via shared demographic traits, such as individuals’ gender (Phillips, Chapter ; Celis and Erzeel, Chapter ), and ethnicity (Ruedin, Chapter )? Would alternative forms of elite recruitment through sortition contribute to better representation (Farrell and Stone, Chapter )? Part IV covers the role of ‘party government’ as the central conduit through which public preferences influence policies. The chapters discuss the framework and its preconditions (Katz, Chapter ), assess the degree to which parties offer appropriate choices (Dalton, Chapter ), and whether citizens meet the requirements of the chain (Van der Brug, Harteveld, and van Slageren, Chapter ). Two chapters then examine the extent of intra-party unity (Hazan and Itzkovich-Malta, Chapter ) and intraparty democracy and their contribution to representation (Poguntke and Scarrow, Chapter ). The next chapters examine whether and when parties keep election promises (Thomson, Chapter ), adequately represent constituent policy views (Lefkofridi, Chapter ), and whether institutions connect the views of citizens to public policy (Powell, Chapter ). The final chapters in this part investigate whether lower turnout impedes the quality of representation (Blais, Kostelka, and Dassonville, Chapter ) and whether mass publics feel represented (Holmberg, Chapter ). Part V examines in what ways non-traditional actors enrich representative institutions. Increasingly, civic society has challenged the dominance of parties as the main agent of representation. This has led to vibrant social movements, and a growth in direct citizen involvement (Colombo and Kriesi, Chapter ), whereas old and new interest groups also continue to contribute to representation (Richardson, Chapter ). Two final chapters turn to the view of citizens about their own role: how activism

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

    

connects to evaluations of representative democracy (van Deth, Chapter ) and the dynamic relationship between policies and public preferences (Wlezien, Chapter ). Part VI introduces the limits that traditional representation mechanisms face in liberal democracies. It discusses the inherent tensions that semi-autonomous regulatory agencies (e.g., central banks) create for the idea of representation. The independence these institutions require from political interference may conflict with the aim to control them democratically (Bovens and Schillemans, Chapter ). The part also assesses the influence of the rising social media on the information content of constituent preferences (Peffley, Denison, and Taylor, Chapter ). The multiplication of non-traditional forms of social media has the potential to increase the number of information sources available to citizens. But it may also lower the overall quality of the knowledge that individuals acquire over time. Part VII examines the rise and implications of populism for the quality of representation in liberal democracies. The rise of anti-establishment parties at the left extreme and especially right-extreme end of party systems poses serious challenges to the wellfunctioning operations of representative democracies. What are the main claims by challengers (Norris, Chapter ; Meyer and Wagner, Chapter )? To what extent do they aim to modify the core mechanisms of representative democracies? What is the normative and empirical threat to liberal democracies when viewed from the experience of Central-Eastern Europe (Enyedi and Whitefield, Chapter )? Finally, Part VIII examines international challenges to the traditional mechanisms of representation within nation-states. This part begins with an assessment of how growing globalization may affect nationally organized institutions (Hellwig, Chapter ). Electorates change because of growing international linkages; parties must respond to new international issues, and governments struggle to deal with the fallout from economic activities that often occur beyond national borders. Then, as an example, how does the EU help or impede the representation of constituents (Hobolt, Chapter ; Magalhães and Fernandez, Chapter )? The growing economic linkages across national boundaries pose severe challenges to the nationally defined framework of representation. A final chapter draws out the various ways democratic institutions at a level above the nation-state could be designed (Bellamy, Chapter ). In sum, the core idea of the Handbook is to trace the normative basis of liberal representation, sketch the development of these institutions as manifested in Western democracies, describe and assess the extent to which their mechanisms work effectively, and evaluate the potential threats liberal democracy currently faces.

C  R D

.................................................................................................................................. Anyone who has the time to read the entire volume may come away with two broad conclusions. On one hand, the sum total message of the various chapters is, on balance,

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rather positive. Several analyses—especially those in part IV—conclude that the chain often works as intended. On the other hand, there are some disturbing signs that not everything is working as intended in the chain of representation or—perhaps more accurately—there are signs that what worked well in the past may no longer do so in the near future. One may be tempted to point to the rise of new parties (populist and green parties, for instance) whose success indicates that many voters are dissatisfied with the programmatic offerings of mainstream parties. However, to take the rise of new parties alone as a sign of a representation failure would be too short-sighted. Nowhere does the chain of representation stipulate normatively or mechanically that mainstream parties have a monopoly on representing citizens. Indeed, the idea is precisely that if parties ignore mass preferences, existing or new parties may fill the void. We thus think that the rise of populist parties nowadays, or green parties in the s, while challenging for historically grown mass parties, is not—and should not be mistaken for—a sign of the imminent collapse of the current system of political representation. To the contrary. Of course, it is another question whether new parties criticize not just the programmatic orientation of existing parties but question the rules of the electoral game in their entirety, or perhaps even the democratic framework altogether. If publics indeed have a preference for a new set of electoral rules or even another democratic regime, or if parties ever more intensely criticize elections as instruments of representation, then it would obviously signal that representation is seriously flawed.¹ But the rise of new parties per se does not reveal a problem. Instead, we think that the tremors spelling potential trouble for the chain of representation run deeper and more subtly. They concern the premises of the chain of representation (stage ) as much or more as they reflect a failure of the central actors (i.e., parties, government, and voters). The chain of representation is embedded in an ecosystem of premises that leads to effective representation under a specific set of conditions. We detect signs in various chapters that the tacit premises, which the chain assumes so that the responsive behaviour of parties can lead to a successful representation, become undermined. In order to describe where we see these signs, we will highlight three closely linked challenges to the chain’s premise: a functional challenge, an authority challenge, and a normative challenge arising from calls for alternative forms of democracy and representation. Again, none of these challenges signals the demise of the chain of representation. However, they require good decisions by current actors— especially parties—to sustain the current mechanism of representation.

F C  R  L D ..................................................................................................................................

Representation-through-parties in liberal democracies first and foremost assumes that () institutions live up to their ideals most of the time; () the policy preferences and

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

    

orientations of citizens display traits that make representation via parties possible; and () political parties offer a choice on issues that reflect the policy preferences of voters. We highlight each in turn and point to the chapters that fully establish the nature of the challenge. Institutional Characteristics. Institutional challenges can arise because the institutional framework of the chain (stages  to ) does not deliver those policies it should deliver according to its own ideals. What are the ideals behind democratic institutions? In order to answer this question, we must distinguish between two general institutional types: a majoritarian and a consensus model. A majoritarian model of democracy prioritizes the will of the majority of the people, which means that the winning party after an election ideally receives unencumbered access to parliament and governments. A consensus model of democracy, in turn, places greater emphasis on minority protection, weakening the exercise of power by the victorious majority (Chapters  and  in this Handbook; Lijphart ; Powell ). Each type thus stresses a somewhat different balance between majority rule and minority protections and rights and each sets a somewhat different benchmark for how it should perform according to its own institutional logic. There is evidence that both of the institutional types may fall short of their own ideals. For example, majoritarian visions institute, in as pure a form as may be possible, a ‘mandate’ version of representation. The mechanism assumes that a single party governs unencumbered in order to implement the ‘will of the majority’. However, this ideal is often missed when the governing ‘majority’ actually constitutes a plurality and the ‘majority’ of citizens therefore do not support the (often) single governing party. One consequence is that majoritarian institutions often fall short of representing the median citizen better than other forms of government (Powell : chapter ). Additionally, as Lijphart () argues, from a democratic perspective, a majoritarian government is only legitimate in a homogeneous society where the dividing issues can be reduced to a single dimension of conflict. As the debates over Brexit in the United Kingdom, the prototype of majoritarian democracy, amply show, the British party system runs into great difficulty in handling a cross-cutting conflict dimension like Brexit. In turn, the consensus model of democracy assumes that each link in the chain provides a check to constrain the uncompromising will of the majority of the people in order to secure the expression of minority views. At first sight the consensus model of democracy seems to perform much better than the majoritarian model according to its own standards. Because of one of its defining characteristics, a proportional electoral system, it gives more access to new movements and political parties representing policy views not yet represented in parliament. The early representation of right-wing populist parties in most European consensus democracies is an obvious case in point. However, according to the consensus model of democracy a broad representation of political parties and minorities should not only occur in parliament but throughout the

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

chain of representation, including the government. However, with a few exceptions like the ‘magic formula’ in Switzerland, this usually is not the case. After the elections most consensual democracies actually follow a majoritarian logic in the formation of the government, inconsistently combining elements from two opposite democratic systems, and often combining the worst of two worlds (Chapter  in this Handbook), that is, the lack of an electoral mandate for the government and its poor accountability in a consensual system, combined with the side-lining of the losing minorities after an election. Also, because several parties are needed to form a government, this process usually takes a long time. Belgium holds the world record of the longest government formation ever: the formation after the  parliamentary elections took no less than  days. As a consequence, once a policy agreement has been reached after lengthy negotiations, it is cast in stone, making government policy inflexible and largely unresponsive to alternative views and changing circumstances. Finally, just as in the case of majoritarian institutions, the quality of a consensus democracy is context dependent. In his early work, Lijphart advocated consociational democracy only for deeply divided countries (Lijphart ). Once these divisions lose their political relevance, the cooperation between political elites loses its function as well. It no longer serves the purpose of reconciling mutually hostile groups in society and might easily pervert into a cartel democracy. The lack of competition between the established parties deprives voters of a meaningful choice within the system. Opposition can only come from without the system and almost by definition takes the form of a voice against the established party system (Chapter  in this Handbook; Lijphart ). Therefore, it is probably no coincidence that populist parties first originated in consensus democracies like Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands (Chapter  in this Handbook; Andeweg ), vehemently attacking the so-called ‘establishment’ for ignoring the common people (Schedler ; Barr ). Thus, it appears that consensual democracies tend to unfold their ‘kinder, gentler’ (Lijphart, ) qualities primarily in highly segmented societies with commensurate elite cooperation. But this may no longer be the case when societal changes dissolve deeply seated divisions so that elite cooperation now does not look as beneficial as it once did. We thus see that the quality of representation, especially in stages  to , is substantially influenced by the way that institutions deliver those ideals they promise to produce, which, in turn, may lead citizens and elites to question whether the chain of representation can function as intended. As long as institutions fall short of these ideals, they may stimulate criticism of the chain of representation even if parties do all they can to deliver policies that (their) voters demand. Citizen Characteristics. Another functional challenge centres on the flaws in the information provided to and digested by individual citizens (stage ). The starting point of the chain seems so simple. Individuals hold preferences, which they form on the basis of their values and beliefs, or in response to events and elite cues. These then become channelled via parties into institutions via party policies. On closer inspection, however, the simplicity vanishes. These preferences must display certain traits before

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

    

they can become aggregated and channelled into policies by parties and institutions (Chapter  in this Handbook; Dalton et al. ; Thomassen ). Thomassen () has highlighted these assumptions that lie at the beginning of the chain: voters actually have preferences; they are aware of party positions and they support a party that most closely matches these preferences; the preferences of voters are not idiosyncratically distributed but reflect an overarching ideology that ideally represents a uni-dimensional structure (Chapters , , and  in this Handbook). The unidimensional premise is needed because if there is more than one dimension in the electorate it is nearly impossible for voters to systematically link their issue preferences to a specific party. However, there is evidence that the dimensionality of electorates, in particular, may approach a degree of complexity that raises huge difficulties for the representation of public preferences (Dalton ; Hooghe and Marks ; Prosser ; Chapter  in this Handbook). This research shows that the economic, cultural, and international issue dimensions often do not align neatly into one overarching ideology. As a consequence, when a voter holds left views on the economy she may hold a culturally conservative view, and vice versa. Because in most countries this particular combination of policy views is not offered by any of the parties, voters are forced to vote according to either one of these dimensions. As a consequence, vot