Coincidental Representation: How Congruence and Influence shape Public Satisfaction with Government

Abstract

A much-cited finding in recent political science is that average citizens in established democracies appear to have little influence on public policy, while the affluent have strong influence. Yet, as critics have pointed out, average and affluent often want the same from government, meaning that even without influence, average citizens often get the policies they want ‘by coincidence’. This raises an important question: Do citizens care about ‘who governs’ if government regularly adopts their preferred policies anyway? Using a preregistered survey experiment, I show that political inequality causes just as much popular dissatisfaction with government when policy outcomes are highly consistent with a respondent’s policy preferences, as it does when policy outcomes are inconsistent with those preferences. While opinion-policy congruence remains an important predictor of satisfaction, citizens also appear to value political equality independently of policy outcomes. These findings suggest that coincidental representation may not fully compensate for perceived inequalities in political influence.