Voters’ preferences for party representation: Promise-keeping, responsiveness to public opinion or enacting the common good

Annika Werner*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

33 Citations (Scopus)

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)486-501
Number of pages16
JournalInternational Political Science Review
Volume40
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2019
Externally publishedYes

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