09:30 - 11:10
P6-S153
Room: 1A.03
Chair/s:
Lukas Hetzer
Discussant/s:
Anne Rasmussen
Mass–Elite Process Congruence and Citizens’ Political Attitudes
P6-S153-5
Presented by: Philippe Mongrain
Philippe Mongrain 1, Nino Junius 1, 2
1 University of Antwerp
2 Vrije Universiteit Brussel
The effects of policy (in)congruence on democratic attitudes among citizens are well-documented in the literature. Yet, similar studies on congruence in representative style or process congruence remain rare. In this paper, we contribute to extant research on the process gap by gauging the effects of different measurements of process (in)congruence—i.e., citizens’ congruence with the government, all elected representatives and MPs from their preferred party—on various measures of democratic disenchantment, namely satisfaction with the current state of democracy, support for the democratic regime, and confidence in parliament and the government. Moreover, we test political interest as a key mechanism through which the effect of the process gap should operate on democratic disenchantment. Whereas this mechanism has been established in the literature on policy incongruence and its effects on democratic disenchantment; it has yet to be examined in the case of process congruence. Hence, the present article aims not only to assess the impact of process congruence on satisfaction with democracy as well as a number of attitudes signaling citizens’ support or disenchantment towards democratic institutions, but also whether the effect of (in)congruence varies depending on their interest in politics. Finally, we examine these dynamics by drawing on longitudinal data from Portugal collected before, during, and after the eurozone crisis. This approach allows us to explore whether the economic state of a country affects the relationship between process incongruence and democratic disenchantment.
Keywords: elite, democracy, process congruence, representation

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