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Some scholars use the 'dynamic representation' approach to test how much current policy changes reflect past public preferences. This article tests hypotheses derived from this approach in a left–right context for the United Kingdom from 1976 to 2006. This shows that government policy on the left–right scale shifts as public preferences change ('rational anticipation'). Secondly, a public with right-wing preferences elects the Conservatives, who pursue right-wing policies in office ('electoral turnover'). However, popular incumbents are less likely to adjust their policy position to the public. The Westminster system is criticized for its weak link between the rulers and the ruled, but dynamic representation on the left–right scale in the United Kingdom seems to have functioned admirably in this period.

Whose preferences determine the direction of government policy? Is it the political centre, formally known as the median or mean voter, or is government policy more responsive to socio-economic elites? This paper examines political representation in the United Kingdom on the left-right scale. Politicians face a trade-off between policy and electoral incentives. The observed policy behaviour of the British government is therefore posited as a weighted average between these conflicting interests. In contrast to previous studies this paper posits an important role for political competition in the study of unequal representation. Representation can be expected to be biased towards groups with higher incomes during safe Conservative governments. Instead, when a safe Labour government has control over the direction of policy, policy outputs are more likely to be responsive to the preferences of groups with lower incomes. Under an electorally vulnerable governing party, regardless of its ideological colour, observed policy behaviour will be skewed towards the preferences of middle incomes, or, analogously, the mean voter. These propositions are tested and affirmed with longitudinal policy- and opinion-data from 1973-2006.

The left-right scheme is the most widely used and parsimonious representation of political competition. Yet, long time series of the left-right position of governments are sparse. Existing methods are of limited use in dynamic settings due to insufficient time points which hinders the proper specification of time-series regressions. This article analyses legislative speeches in order to construct an annual left-right policy variable for Britain from 1956 to 2006. Using a recently developed content analysis tool, known as Wordscores, it is shown that speeches yield valid and reliable estimates for the left-right position of British government policy. Long time series such as the one proposed in this article are vital to building dynamic macro-level models of politics. This measure is cross-validated with four independent sources: (1) it compares well to expert surveys; (2) a rightward trend is found in post-war British government policy; (3) Conservative governments are found to be more right wing in their policy outputs than Labour governments; (4) conventional accounts of British post-war politics support the pattern of government policy movement on the left-right scale.

This study examines whether or not political representation in the Netherlands is biased toward the rich and higher educated by comparing the political orientations of members of parliament to those of the electorate. The analyses reveal stark differences in the representation of different socio-economic groups. The political views of elected national representatives are far more similar to those of rich, higher educated citizens than to those with less income and education. Moreover, a longitudinal analysis reveals that inequalities in political representation have actually grown in recent years. We also show that the use of measures of ideological self-identification might to lead to highly misleading results regarding the nature of political representation as opposed to the use of issue items. We conclude that, despite a highly proportional electoral system, the views which are represented in the Dutch lower house of parliament contain major distortions of the views of the broader electorate.

Ideological congruence is an important and popular measure of the quality of political representation. The closer the match between the preferences of the public and those of elected elites, the better representative democracy is thought to function. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to the effects of ideological congruence on political judgment. We address this gap by examining whether citizens use egocentric or sociotropic judgments of congruence to evaluate democratic performance. Using a variety of congruence measures, we find that citizens are unmoved by sociotropic congruence; however, our analyses provide clear evidence that egocentric congruence boosts citizen satisfaction, especially among political sophisticates. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the study of ideological congruence and political representation.

Scholars have long debated whether welfare policymaking in industrialized democracies is responsive to citizen preferences and whether such policymaking is more responsive to rich than to poor citizens. Debate has been hampered, however, by difficulties in matching data on attitudes toward particular policies to data on changes in the generosity of actual policies. This article uses better, more targeted measures of policy change that allow more valid exploration of responsiveness for a significant range of democracies. It does so by linking multicountry and multiwave survey data on attitudes toward health, pension, and unemployment policies and data on actual policy generosity, not just spending, in these domains. The analysis reveals that attitudes correlate strongly with subsequent changes in welfare generosity in the three policy areas and that such responsiveness is much stronger for richer than for poorer citizens. Representation is likely real but also vastly unequal in the welfare politics of industrialized democracies.

Scholars have long debated whether welfare policymaking in industrialized democracies is responsive to citizen preferences, and whether such policymaking is more responsive to rich than to poor citizens. These debates have been hampered, however, by difficulties in matching data on attitudes towards particular policies to data on changes in actual policy generosity. This paper uses better, more targeted measures of policy change that allow more valid exploration of responsiveness for a significant range of democracies. It does so by linking multi-country and multi-wave survey data on attitudes towards health, pension and unemployment policies, to data on actual policy generosity, not just spending, in these domains. This reveals that attitudes strongly correlate with subsequent changes in welfare generosity in the three policy areas, and that such responsiveness is much stronger for richer than for poorer citizens. Representation is likely real but also vastly unequal in the welfare politics of industrialized democracies.