Replication Data for: Territorial Representation and the Opinion-Policy Linkage: Evidence from the European Union

A key feature of federal systems is the representation of sub-national units by “territorial representatives” in policy-making at the federal level. How do such arrangements influence the linkage between public opinion and policy outputs? I argue that policy-making under territorial representation should be systematically skewed towards opinion in those states where citizens care about a policy issue and have a uniform view on it. This claim is tested using a novel dataset of policy change in the European Union, covering 211 policy issues and 6,506 observations of opinion-policy dyads. Results show that measures weighting opinion across member states by how much national citizens care about an issue are better predictors of policy change than EU-wide mean opinion. Moreover, congruence between state-level opinion and EU-level policy becomes more likely, the more salient and clear-cut opinion in a member state. These findings refine our understanding of the opinion-policy linkage under territorial representation.