Democracies are expected to deliver representation of citizens’ policy views. This assumption is based on the following belief: that if citizens hold decided policy preferences (i.e. they have a view about what government should do in a certain policy area, and/or across several policy areas), then politicians win elections by representing what citizens want — or at least by closely representing what the majority of citizens want, or enough citizens to get them over a threshold of necessary seats in a parliament.
Politicians only have incentives to match their policies to the policy preferences of the electorate if citizens choose between parties on the basis of candidate or party policy promises and/or their policy decisions in government. That is to say, the assumption of representative government is based on the belief that voters choose between parties on the basis of policy issues — voters engage in issue voting.
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