Guenther, Laurenz (2024) Political Representation Gaps and Populism. SSRN’s Research Paper Series

Abstract

Populists are often defined as those who claim that they fill "political representation gaps" -differences between the policymaking by established parties and the "popular will." Research has largely neglected to what extent this claim is correct. I study descriptively whether representation gaps exist and their relationship with populism. To this end, I analyze the responses of citizens and parliamentarians from 27 European countries to identical survey policy questions, which I compile and verify to be indicative of voting in referendums. I find that policymaking represents the economic attitudes of citizens well. However, I document that the average parliamentarian is about 1SD more culturally liberal than the national mean voter. This cultural representation gap is systematic in four ways: i) it arises on nearly all cultural issues, ii) in nearly all countries, iii) nearly all established parties are more culturally liberal than the national mean voter, and iv) all major demographic groups tend to be more conservative than their parliamentarians. Moreover, I find that demographic differences between voters and parliamentarians or lack of political knowledge cannot fully account for representation gaps. Finally, I show that right-wing populists fill the cultural representation gap.