The impact of political professionalization on legislators-citizens congruence in policies and process preferences

This paper argues that legislators’ individual professionalization reduces their incentives for responsive behavior and increases collusion among them. These mechanisms are presumed to deteriorate legislators’ attitudinal congruence with citizens regarding policies and process preferences. We test our hypotheses for the case of Germany by conducting exploratory Correspondence Analysis and OLS-regression models applied to data provided by a simultaneous survey among legislators and citizens in Germany conducted with an identical questionnaire. The empirical analyses reject the hypothesis for the left-right dimension but corroborates it partially for a second conflict dimension that touches upon the degree of autonomy and heteronomy of legislators in representative democracies. The impact of individual professionalization is accordingly mediated by the degree of party competition. If parties compete, the leeway for attitudinal shifts and convergence of legislators is constrained by the collective stances of their own parties.