Political representation as congruence between citizens' preferences and public policies: a review of international literature

Abstract

This article presents a review of the international literature concerning empirical studies on political representation in the domain of central institutions for representative democracy, denominated in part of this literature as studies of "political congruence". These studies analyze the congruence between the voters' political preferences, on the one hand, and the representatives' political preferences or the public policies approved by them, on the other hand. In Brazil this kind of analysis barely exists. However, expressive literature about these subjects has been produced in the last fifty years, especially in the United States and in Europe. At the end of the article I propose an empirical research agenda aiming to approximate Brazilian studies to this debate, contributing thus to a better understanding of the representation process in the Brazilian democracy.

Keywords:
political representation; political congruence; public opinion; public policies