Congruencia ideológica e Integración europeaun análisis de los vínculos entre votantes y partidos en Europa

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the analysis of the links between parties voters on Western European countries through the study of the ideological and programmatic congruence. First, using a descriptive approach this research deals with the conceptualization and measurement of the ideological and programmatic congruence. Therefore, I carry out an evaluation of the levels of congruence between representatives and represented in Western Europe focused on the traditional dimension of partisan competition in Europe: the left and right dimension. Next, those findings are compared with the levels of correspondence found in a political topic that has been inserted in the public debate in the European States: the issue of the attitudes towards the European integration. A topic that does not conform to the classic cleavages found in the European political systems. In the second part of this research, I carry out an analysis of the factors that explain the ideological and programmatic congruence between the voters and European parties, taking into account different explanatory factors that the scholars have been proposing in previous works. This dissertation offers new and relevant evidence that is useful to understand the links between representatives and represented, examining the effect of several individual, partisan and contextual factors using multilevel statistical models.