Are challengers better representatives? Substantive representation in Greece and Spain

This chapter compares the case of Greece with Spain in terms of trends in substantive representation in recent years. The party systems of both countries experienced profound change following the onset of the Great Recession, after many years of relative stability. New challenger parties gained representation in parliament, to a large extent by riding the wave of discontent of the electorate towards establishment parties and by criticising their lack of responsiveness towards voters’ actual preferences. By utilising candidate and voter data from both countries (elected representatives only for Spain), this chapter investigates the degree to which the significant party system change that took place during this period, marked by the electoral success of challenger parties, brought with it an improvement in terms of substantive representation. Contrary to expectations, challenger parties do not appear to be better representatives than mainstream parties, at least in terms of party-voter congruence on a variety of issues.