Linking Responsiveness to Political Participation: Are Opinion Leaders Better Represented?

Research has shown that low-resource groups, such as the low-educated, poor, or black citizens, see their preferences less well represented in established democracies. However, few studies have analyzed the effect of political participation on policy responsiveness. Recent studies on this topic have mainly focused on whether voters are better represented than non-voters. This article focuses on opinion leaders, i.e. citizens who regularly discuss politics and who attempt to persuade others to change their viewpoints, and examines whether they are better represented than rank-and-file-voters. Taking advantage of a direct democracy context, we combine roll call votes and information from popular votes to compare the voting behavior of MPs and citizens on exactly the same legislative proposals. We thus overcome limitations pertaining to the lack of identical information regarding elites’ and citizens’ preferences that is common in the literature. We find that opinion leaders are better represented than the rest of the electorate, and that responsiveness varies across parties. Our findings have important implications for understanding the representation of citizens as a whole, and of different sub-constituencies. They also contribute to the literature on niche parties and how they respond to public opinion.