What explains ideological congruence between citizens and political parties? Although the literature on congruence has recently provided some answers to this question, most of these works have focused on the effect of systemic and partisan factors. They have paid less attention to the effect of people’s characteristics on ideological congruence, which is built by the interaction between citizens’ positions on public issues and those of the political parties that represent them. Our general research hypothesis is that party-voter congruence is stronger when parties reduce the uncertainty about their ideological positions and citizens can understand these signals better. Analysis of Latin American data supports this hypothesis, showing that people’s cognitive ability, specifically education and political knowledge, has a positive effect on party-voter ideological congruence. Moreover, this relationship is moderated by parties’ attributes, such as ideological ambiguity and radicalism.

中文翻译：

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拉丁美洲意识形态一致性的多层次模型

什么解释了公民和政党之间的意识形态一致性？尽管关于一致性的文献最近为这个问题提供了一些答案，但这些作品中的大多数都集中在系统性和党派因素的影响上。他们较少关注人的特征对意识形态一致性的影响，这是由公民在公共问题上的立场与代表他们的政党立场之间的相互作用所建立的。我们的一般研究假设是，当政党减少其意识形态立场的不确定性并且公民可以更好地理解这些信号时，政党与选民的一致性会更强。对拉丁美洲数据的分析支持这一假设，表明人们的认知能力，特别是教育和政治知识，对党和选民的意识形态一致性有积极的影响。此外，这种关系受到政党属性的缓和，例如意识形态的模糊性和激进主义。