Who represents us? A qualitative comparative analysis of ideology congruence in Latin America

Abstract

It presents a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to understand the puzzle of ideological congruence in Latin American countries. QCA is powerful to understand how independent variables combine in specific ways to produce a given outcome. This approach seems appropriate for research on congruence due to the combined effects of institutional variables such as number of parties and electoral systems' proportionality with both socioeconomic factors (education and inequality) and political features (compulsory vote and level of democracy). Stronger democratic institutions could give voters better choices of representation, fostering congruence. Compulsory vote, in turn, could help congruence as it brings more citizens to the polls. Nevertheless, when combined with low levels of education and complex institutions, compulsory voting could be harmful to congruence.The dependent variable is the same one used in the literature (ideology closeness in the left-right scale). Our preliminary results suggest that compulsory voting in conjunction with a high level of democracy and schooling leads to congruence. The number of parties does not seem to be important. However, disproportionality of the electoral system appears in some causal paths to congruence, adding up to previous evidence that challenged the superiority of Proportional Representation systems.