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.

联邦制的核心特征之一，是在联邦层面的政策制定环节中，由“领土代表（territorial representatives）”代表次国家级行政单位。此类制度安排将如何影响公众舆论与政策产出之间的联结机制？本文提出，在采用领土代表制的政策制定框架下，当某成员国的公民既对某一政策议题高度关注，又在此议题上持有统一立场时，政策制定将系统性地偏向该舆论立场。本文使用一套全新的欧盟政策变化数据集对该论点开展实证检验，该数据集涵盖211项政策议题与6506条舆论-政策二元组观测样本。研究结果表明，相较于欧盟全域的平均舆论水平，以各成员国公民对议题的关注度为权重对各国舆论进行加权的测算方法，对政策变化的预测效果更为出色。进一步分析显示，成员国层面的舆论与欧盟层面政策的契合度，会随该成员国议题舆论的显著性与明确性提升而显著提高。上述研究发现深化了学界对领土代表制下舆论-政策联结机制的理解。