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Ideological Congruence: Illusion or Imperfection?
Author(s) -
Powell G. Bingham
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.1111/lsq.12177
Subject(s) - congruence (geometry) , ideology , illusion , political economy , political science , politics , positive economics , sociology , law , social psychology , economics , psychology , cognitive psychology
Paul Warwick ([Warwick, Paul V., 2016]) argues that much of the research on ideological congruence leaves the erroneous impression that a close match of median left‐right voter opinions and government ideological positions usually emerges from elections. I propose further clarifications. I offer a “natural metric” based on the average distances from the median voter of the most distant and the closest parties competing in all these countries’ elections. I suggest that by these standards average ideological congruence in the Western liberal democracies in the last 20 years has been fairly successful, but not as successful as it could be.