Voters’ preferences for party representation: Promise-keeping, responsiveness to public opinion or enacting the common good
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512118787430 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118787430
International Political Science Review
2019, Vol. 40(4) 486 –501
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512118787430
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Voters’ preferences for party
representation: Promise-keeping,
responsiveness to public opinion
or enacting the common good
Annika Werner
Griffith University, Australia
Abstract
The functioning of representative democracy is crucially dependent on the representative behaviour of
political parties. Large parts of the party representation literature assume that voters expect parties to fulfil
the promises of their election programs. What voters actually want from parties, however, remains largely
unclear. Within the Australian context, this article investigates the preferences of voters regarding three
ideal party representative styles: ‘promise keeping’; ‘focus on public opinion’; and ‘seeking the common
good’. Using a novel survey tool, this study finds that voters value promise keeping highly when it is evaluated
individually. However, they rate seeking the common good as most important when the three styles are
directly compared. A multinomial logistic regression analysis shows that, in particular, voters who have been
involved in party grassroots activities prefer promise keeping. These findings have wider implications for our
understanding of how representative democracy can and should work.
Keywords
Democracy, representation, political parties, attitudes, responsiveness
Introduction
Once parties are elected into parliament or government, which principle of representation should
they follow? According to the mandate theory of democracy and most prominent models of party
government, the main task of parties following an election is to keep the promises they made
before the election (e.g., Naurin, 2011; Thomassen and Schmitt, 1997; Thomson et al., 2017). The
argument is that voters give their support to a party on the basis of its election program and expect
their selected party to ensure their vote has the intended consequence. While empirical research has
investigated whether parties provide meaningful election programs, whether voters make their
Corresponding author:
Annika Werner, Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, Brisbane 4111,
Australia.
Email: a.werner@griffith.edu.au
787430IPS0010.1177/0192512118787430International Political Science ReviewWerner
research-article2018
Article
Werner 487
electoral decisions on the basis of these programs and whether parties indeed fulfil their promises
(e.g., Martin et al., 2014; Thomson et al., 2017), there is little research on whether voters share the
normative and theoretical assumption that parties should keep their election promises. According
to rival theories of democratic (party) representation,1 voters could prefer two alternative represen-
tation styles, either that parties react strongly to public opinion in a constant process of input-
updating or that parties engage in a process of identifying and enacting the common good. While
other theoretical representational links might exist between parties and voters, promise-keeping,
responsiveness to public opinion, and enacting the common good encapsulate the most basic prin-
ciples of party representation. Thus, focusing on these three styles and by surveying Australian
voters and measuring their preferences regarding the representation styles of political parties, this
article asks: Which style of party representation do voters prefer?
This article investigates this question utilizing a unique survey among Australian voters that
asks respondents, first, to assess the importance of the three theoretical representation styles (prom-
ise keeping, public opinion, and common good) independent of each other and rate them against
each other in pairs.2 Unlike previous research, the survey uses a vignette to ask respondents to
choose between all three representation styles (see Figure 1). In a subsequent analysis, I show that
Australian respondents value promise keeping very highly only when they evaluate the styles indi-
vidually. Once the respondents need to state which style they prefer over others, a clear hierarchy
appears. In contrast to theoretical expectations, Australian respondents value promise keeping least
and almost half of them choose the common good over the other options. In a second step, I analyse
determinants of respondents’ preferences for different representation styles. The findings suggest
that a crucial factor in the overall low valuation of promise keeping is that mainly respondents with
first-hand experience in the grassroots organizations of parties prefer this style. As only few
respondents have this experience and the low level of engagement in parties is a widespread phe-
nomenon in Western democracies (van Biezen and Poguntke, 2014), it seems likely that similar
results can be expected in other established democracies.
Representative democracy and party representation styles
There is a long-standing discussion about how representative democracy should work. Its basis is
usually the fundamental idea that the people decide on policies by electing individuals or parties
‘who are to assemble in order to carry out its will’ (Schumpeter, 1942: 55). While there are differ-
ent conceptualizations of representative democracy (e.g., Dahl, 1971; Pateman, 1970), in most
modern representative democracies the relationship between parties and voters is central. The
theoretical literature on representational styles, that is, the types of activities democratic repre-
sentatives can undertake to fulfil their role (Eulau et al., 1959), provides possible answers to the
question of how parties can, or should, make representative democracy work. For parties, it sug-
gests multiple possible ideals that fall into two broad categories similar to Pitkin’s distinction
between delegate and trustee styles of representation (Pitkin, 1967).3 The delegate conception
focuses on representational styles that provide a direct link between the policy preferences of vot-
ers and the policy decision-making of political parties. The main difference between the two most
common conceptualizations of this party representation is whether its main mechanism is through
elections (promise keeping) or a constant communication process from voters to parties (through
public opinion). On the other hand, broader discussions of democratic representation call for par-
ties to act in the interest of the common good, which entails the interest of the whole society
(including, for example, future generations) and is closer to the trustee style of representation. In
modern policy-making, the practice of following expert advice comes closest to implementing this
idea. These three styles are discussed in more detail below.
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