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Politicians' perceptions of how citizens decide which party to vote for matter for how they behave in between elections. Yet, except for three older studies, a systematic assessment of how political actors today conceive of citizens' voting motives is non-existent. This study's goal is to fill the empirical lacuna by asking a large number of Belgian Members of Parliament what they believe determines citizens' party choice. It shows that few politicians believe that citizens do their democratic duty and vote for a party because of its policy profile. In politicians' conception, voters hardly take into account the party's policy promises for the future nor the party's past behavior when casting their vote. Instead, most MPs believe that citizens are seduced to vote for a party because of individual candidates on the party list, and because of the party's campaign communications. These findings matter for substantive representation.

AbstractRepresentation literature is rife with the assumption that politicians are responsive to voter preferences because their re‐election is contingent upon the approval of those voters, approval that can be won by furthering their desires or, similarly, that can be threatened by ignoring their wishes. Hence, scholars argue that the anticipation of electoral accountability by politicians constitutes a crucial guarantor of (policy) responsiveness; as long as politicians believe that voters are aware of what they do and will take it into account on election day, they are expected to work hard at keeping these voters satisfied. If, on the other hand, politicians were to think what they say and do is inconsequential for citizens' voting behaviour, they may see leeway to ignore their preferences. In this study, we therefore examine whether politicians anticipate electoral accountability in the first place. In particular, we ask 782 Members of Parliament in Belgium, Germany, Canada and Switzerland in a face‐to‐face survey about the anticipation of voter control; whether they believe that voters are aware of their behaviour in parliament and their personal policy positions, are able to evaluate the outcomes of their political work, and, finally, whether this knowledge affects their vote choice. We find that a sizable number of MPs believe that voters are aware of what they do and say and take that into account at the ballot box. Still, this general image of rather strong anticipation of voter control hides considerable variation; politicians in party‐centred systems (in Belgium and some politicians in Germany that are elected on closed party lists), anticipate less voter control compared to politicians in more candidate‐centred systems (Canada and Switzerland). Within these countries, we find that populist politicians are more convinced that voters know about their political actions and take this knowledge into account in elections; it seems that politicians who take pride in being close to voters (and their preferences), also feel more monitored by these voters. Finally, we show that politicians' views of voter control do not reflect the likelihood that they might be held to account; politicians whose behaviour is more visible and whose policy profile should therefore be better known to voters do not feel the weight of voter control more strongly.

The principle that democracies give all citizens an equal voice is challenged by scholarly work showing that policies tend to be biased in favor of the more wealthy citizenry. One reason for such unequal representation lies in representatives being less responsive to the preferences of lower compared to higher‐income citizens in their policy actions. Drawing on surveys with local elected representatives in Belgium and Sweden, this study zooms in on two potential drivers of unequal responsiveness. We look at the possibility that politicians have less incentives to be responsive to the less affluent, and less accurate information to do so in the first place. Concretely, we question politicians about the anticipation of accountability from lower‐ versus higher‐income citizens (incentives) and make them estimate the policy positions of lower‐ and higher‐income citizens (information). Moreover, we explore whether descriptive representation factors into these two possible drivers of unequal responsiveness by leveraging variation in politicians' backgrounds. First, we find that representatives anticipate significantly less electoral accountability from lower‐income than from higher‐income citizens. Moreover, politicians with a lower‐class background hold less unequal accountability beliefs, hinting at the importance of more equal descriptive representation in mitigating inequality in responsiveness. Second, unequal responsiveness does not seem to be a matter of representatives having less accurate information about the opinions of lower‐income citizens; politicians' estimations of different income groups' policy preferences are equally inaccurate.

Politicians learning about public opinion and responding to their resulting perceptions is one key way via which responsive policy-making comes about. Despite the strong normative importance of politicians' understanding of public opinion, empirical evidence on how politicians learn about these opinions in the first place is scant. Drawing on survey data collected from almost 900 incumbent politicians in five countries, this study presents unique descriptive evidence on which public opinion sources politicians deem most useful. The findings show that politicians deem direct citizen contact and information from traditional news media as the most useful sources of public opinion information, while social media cues and polls are considered much less useful. These findings matter for substantive representation, and for citizens' feeling of being represented.

AbstractBackgroundResearch shows that there is variation in how responsive individual politicians are to voter preferences. One explanation, it is commonly argued, lies in politicians' varying electoral motivations.MethodsWe test this assumption in a survey‐embedded experiment in which Belgian Members of parliament were asked what position they would take on a policy proposal after a random half of them had been shown real survey data indicating that their party voters were in favor of this policy.ResultsWe find that politicians who feel unsure about their re‐election adapt their behavior more to be in line with the preferences of voters than confident politicians. Moreover, the anticipation of electoral accountability fosters responsiveness; the more politicians anticipate to be held accountable on Election Day for what they do and say, the more they respond to voter preferences.ConclusionThese ideas are not new, yet we are the first to isolate them empirically and demonstrate their individual‐level foundations.

This book examines a central assumption widely accepted as being crucial in making democracy work, that politicians form a more or less accurate image of public opinion and take that perception into account when representing citizens. Politicians' Reading of Public Opinion and its Biases presents a paradox of representation.

Using a survey experiment in Belgium, this study investigates to what extent media criticism voiced by political elites affects citizens' media perceptions. In the experiment, citizens are exposed to tweets in which political parties attack the public broadcast for (1) being ideologically slanted and (2) being inaccurate. The study shows that by attacking a news outlet elites are able to increase citizens' perceptions of partisan bias in that outlet. However, we also find that this does not spill over to their general perception of bias or trust in the traditional media. In addition, we demonstrate that not all types of elite attacks on the media have a similar effect, as we find no evidence of tweets where elites criticize the news for being inaccurate impact citizens' perceptions of the media.

When citizens perceive news coverage as ideologically slanted, their crucial trust in the (traditional) news media decreases. Research on the so-called hostile media phenomenon indeed shows that an alarming number of people consider news coverage as disadvantaging their own political preferences and favoring opposing (partisan) views. However, most of this research is conducted in an experimental setting, and we do not know how this works in the real world, where citizens predominantly consume news from media outlets they trust and perceive as ideologically like-minded. By questioning Belgian citizens about their perceptions of partisan bias in their preferred news outlet, this study shows that the hostile media phenomenon also holds in a least likely context; even content produced by "friendly" news sources is seen as ideologically slanted, potentially contributing to citizens' general distrust in the news media. Moreover, we find that especially right-wing citizens and strong partisans believe their news outlet disadvantages their preferred party.

Politicians' perceptions of public opinion matter for substantive representation, but previous work has concluded that they do not have very accurate perceptions of voters' policy preferences. We add to the debate on the drivers of perceptual accuracy by exploring whether politicians have a more accurate understanding of public opinion when it matters either to voters or themselves, or when politicians think it matters more to voters. Drawing on survey data collected among elected representatives and citizens in Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany, we show that politicians have a better understanding of public opinion when they think the issue matters to voters. Further, when an issue is personally important to politicians they more accurately estimate their party supporters' opinions. The results confirm that politicians hold more accurate perceptions of voters' preferences when they think it is important to do so, but not necessarily when the issues actually are important to voters.