A new article has been published by Christopher Wratil in the American Journal of Political Science. You can find it online here.
Territorial Representation and the Opinion–Policy Linkage: Evidence from the European Union
First published: 30 October 2018
Abstract: : A key feature of federal systems is the representation of subnational units by “territorial representatives” in policymaking at the federal level. How do such arrangements influence the linkage between public opinion and policy outputs? I argue that policymaking under territorial representation should be systematically skewed toward opinion in thosestates where citizens care about a policy issue and have a uniform view on it. This claim is tested using a novel data setof policy change in the European Union (EU), covering 211 policy issues and 6,506 observations of opinion–policy dyads.
Results show that measures weighting opinion across member states by how much national citizens care about an issue are better predictors of policy change than EU-wide mean opinion. Moreover, congruence between state-level opinion and EU-level policy becomes more likely, the more salient and clear-cut opinion in a member state is. These findings refine our understanding of the opinion–policy linkage under territorial representation.