The Connected Politics Lab Autumn Speaker Series 2020 includes a seminar on Wednesday 23rd September by Miriam Sorace, who will talking about Competing and Competitive Legislatures and the Policy-Opinion Link.
Are public policies closer to public opinion when directly elected, independent legislatures are included in the decision-making process? The study exploits the European Union as a case, to examine whether the empowerment of the European Parliament decreased the incongruence of EU policies to European public opinion. Using a difference-in-differences approach and crowd-sourced ideological scaling of EU social and employment policies, the study aims to causally identify the impact of competitive and competing legislative branches on the nature of policy representation. The study finds that the inclusion of the European Parliament as a co-legislator has indeed reduced the distance of EU public policy to European public opinion. Competing and electorally competitive legislative chambers have indeed the potential to solve democratic deficits.