Like Two Peas in a Pod? Testing the Alleged Gap on EU Opposition Between Voters and Political Elites

Academic literature on representation has a long-standing tradition with respect to the European Union, as proved by the growing amount of consideration recently dedicated by several scholars on the effects of elite-mass congruence in the context of European integration. Studies over the years were able to envisage, through the analysis of citizens and elites’ preferences both in European elections and at the national level, growing degrees of both salience and negative attitude amongst public opinion with respect to the EU; a trend that, however, does not seem to be matched by representatives in national parliaments. Overall, there is now little doubt that Euroscepticism is on the rise. But despite such a sheer amount of literature, little attention has been paid to the role of the political formations that nominally claim to represent and channel public discontent towards the European path. In other words, do Eurosceptic parties’ elites effectively reflect their voters? And how? We aim to address this important question by moving beyond the current ‘traditional model’ of congruence between parties and voters to the more accurate congruence between citizens and national MPs over a whole series of issues — economy, security, immigration, and European integration — to explore variation in the proximity between representatives and their supporters. Departing from the assumption that policymakers should reflect their citizens’ preferences, we aim to assess whether Eurosceptic parties do effectively mirror their voters or, per contra, do not drift apart from the literature’s path. To test our theoretical expectations, mass-elite congruence is analysed across ten European countries through both the usage of the new EUENGAGE mass-elite survey and the adoption of an innovative method — the Earth Mover’s Distance (EMD) — to provide tentative support for our hypotheses and address the potential shortcomings of the existing measures of congruence.