Responsiveness Towards Street Protests: MPs’ and citizens’ Normative Views

Abstract

Almost 93% of Spaniards consider that governments and representatives ought to heed voices in the street instead of avoiding protesters. A smaller majority of MPs (74%) support responsiveness to protest. This chapter focuses on individual attitudes associated with these normative views and explores the relative lack of (procedural) congruence. This analysis shows that ideology, and other political attitudes such as satisfaction with democracy, perception of citizens as politically capable and the manner in which the function of representatives is conceived, present varying associations with these different views. The results suggest that the gap between MPs and citizens is not (only) attributable to their different position in the representative relationship, but also to distinct elements of their political culture, particularly among conservative MPs.