When salience undermines representation: democratic dilemmas in security and counterterrorism policy

Abstract Congruence between the policies implemented by elected representatives and voters’ policy preferences is fundamental to representation and democratic accountability. Can we anticipate a closer alignment between voters’ policy preferences and the policies explicitly adopted by elected representatives on the more electorally significant issues? We address this question using a simple game theoretic model, where we demonstrate that greater salience of a particular issue in elections leads to less congruence between the policies implemented by elected representatives compared to voters’ policy preferences on that very issue. This finding carries significant implications for the connection between electoral salience and representation on valence issues, and has particular relevance for understanding the democratic foundations of security and counterterrorism policies.