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Democratic Representation of Ideological Extremism
Ideological congruence is central to empirical and normative theories of representation and connects to citizens' satisfaction with the political system (for example, Kim, 2009; Ezrow and Xezonakis, 2011). Based on spatial theory, congruence with the average citizen is a prerequisite for parties' electoral success (for example, Downs, 1957; Enelow and Hinich, 1984; Rabinowitz and MacDonald, 1989). Alignment of policy objectives between principal (citizen) and agent (representative) is fundamental in the 'Selection Model' of Representation (Mansbridge, 2009). In addition, one basic assumption underpinning the 'Responsible Party Model' (APSA, 1950; Schmitt and Thomassen, 1999) is that citizens choose parties advocating policy positions close to their own. Moreover, an examination of ideological congruence between parties and their electors indirectly contributes to our knowledge of how well parties perform functions attributed to them in contemporary political systems (see Sartori, 1976). It follows that the existence of political parties with extreme policy positions ensures that ideological extremism among the citizenry gets channeled via extant institutions (Ezrow, 2007).
Yet, the debate revolving around whether support for ideologically extreme parties (IEPs) is an expression of citizens' policy preferences or a non-ideological slap against the mainstream remains unresolved (for example, Van der Brug et al , 2000, 2005; Van der Brug and Fennema, 2003; Norris, 2005). Moreover, whereas many works study ideologically extreme right parties (IERPs) and the citizens supporting them (for example, Kitschelt and McGann, 2005; Arzheimer, 2009), we know very little (for example, Abedi, 2004; Sperber, 2010) about ideologically extreme left parties (IELPs). One explanation for this bias is the electoral success of IERPs compared to IELPs. Since the Soviet collapse, IELPs are either 'in decline' or 'in mutation' (March and Mudde, 2005). It is thus worth examining whether 'successful' IERPs display higher levels of congruence than 'declining' IELPs. What is more, given a growing scholarly interest in the rise of populism across Europe,1 it is interesting to inspect whether 'the man on the street' echoes the positions of those extreme parties on the right (for example, Wodak and Pelinka, 2002; Mudde, 2004) and left (March, 2007)2 engaging in populism.
Research on policy congruence has by and large concentrated on government parties (for example, Huber and Powell, 1994; Blais and Bodet, 2006). Yet, in...