Elisa Deiss-Helbig, Eric Kerrouche, Vincent Tiberj
Advanced democracies are said to be in a longstanding crisis. Citizens seem to be at least critical towards political elites, and in most of the cases even dissatisfied. France is definitely not exceptional in this matter. Regarding responsiveness and representation, a large majority of French citizens consider that “political don’t care about what people think” (about 80 ). In this paper we investigate in an unusual way this dimension of representation. Our main goal is to compare between values of the general public and values of the MPs through the CITREP and LEGIPAR data. We will test several hypotheses: Do MPs agree across the aisle on the matters of which their voters disagree (“all-the-same”-hypothesis)? Can MPs considered to be in advance vis-à-vis their voters on values that can be considered as “progressive” (“avant-garde”-hypothesis)? Or do MPs align with their voters on all dimensions of values (“replication”-hypothesis)? Do MPs show a higher level of consistency and constraint regarding their values than the citizens (“sophistication”-hypothesis)? Are MPs more polarized than their voters as this has been observed in the case of American representatives in the 60s (Ideology-hypothesis)?
