Multi-level legislative representation in an inchoate party system: Mass-elite ideological congruence in Brazil

Research suggests that legislatures in many new and developing democracies may fail to represent voters due to fragmented political systems, incohesive parties, and weak programmatic linkages between elites and voters. Using Brazil's state and national assemblies, we examine the potential for voter-elite congruence in these legislative environments, long considered weak in programmatic representation and highly fragmented due to a decentralized political structure. We use mass and elite survey data from the National Congress and 12 state assemblies from 2005-2014 to jointly estimate deputies' and respondents' ideal points on a common left-right scale. Despite many barriers to ideological representation, we find a relatively strong aggregate pattern of congruence between voters' and politicians' ideological positions, with stronger voter-deputy correspondence for state deputies on average. These patterns are confirmed in a dyadic analysis of deputy and voter characteristics. However, we also find weaknesses in party-level ideological congruence for major parties, particularly for the major left-wing party's voters and the supporters of right-wing parties. These findings suggest that, while the party system did not prevent overall ideological representation, it did may have hindered important aspects of party representation.