The Power of Money: Global Capital and Policy Choices in Developing Countries

Extant studies of the impact that international phenomena have on policy choices, and those focused on the political economy of exchange-rate regimes in particular, are incomplete because they do not consider the effect that reliance on global capital has on the policy preferences of domestic groups. Consequently, they cannot explain why some newly emerging market countries pursue fixed exchange regimes under political and economic conditions—such as recently completed elections, uncompetitive export sectors, and poor national economic performance—in which others have altered their policies. I argue that reliance on different types of foreign capital generates distinct capital-specific policy preferences. Furthermore, rather than simply mimicking the preferences of foreign investors, domestic groups are likely to promote policies that reduce their capital-specific risks and vulnerabilities. Panel logit models of exchange-rate regimes in emerging market countries from 1973 through 2000 demonstrate that higher levels of democracy bolster these effects .     

Authoritarian Attitudes, Democracy, and Policy Preferences among Latin American Elites

This article examines the prevalence and consequences of authoritarian attitudes among elites in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela. We focus on the connection between antidemocratic elite attitudes and support for democracy; the causes and effects of authoritarian attitudes among elites and their implications for authoritarianism; and the impact of authoritarian attitudes beyond social policy preferences to other policy areas that have indirect implications for order. Contrary to some of the literature, we find that antidemocratic attitudes affect elites' support for democracy. Our analysis also speaks to the debate on the origins of authoritarianism. Much of the evidence supports Altemeyer's notion that perceived threat raises levels of authoritarianism, rather than Feldman's contention that threat strengthens the influence of authoritarian attitudes. Finally, we demonstrate that there is a broader influence of authoritarian attitudes on economic policy preferences, but only where those policies appear to have implications for social order.     

Responsiveness without Representation: Evidence from Minimum Wage Laws in U.S. States

How well does public policy represent mass preferences in U.S. states? Current approaches provide an incomplete account of statehouse democracy because they fail to compare preferences and policies on meaningful scales. Here, we overcome this problem by generating estimates of Americans' preferences on the minimum wage and compare them to observed policies both within and across states. Because we measure both preferences and policies on the same scale (U.S. dollars), we can quantify both the association of policy outcomes with preferences across states (responsiveness) and their deviation within states (bias). We demonstrate that while minimum wages respond to corresponding preferences across states, policy outcomes are more conservative than preferences in each state, with the average policy bias amounting to about two dollars. We also show that policy bias is substantially smaller in states with access to direct democratic institutions.     

Limitations of the spatial model

One approach to avoiding the implications of Arrow's paradox is to impose restrictions on the preferences of voters. A restriction often assumed in the literature is that voters' preferences can be represented by a choice among points in a space, where voters' preferences are convex. We claim that these assumptions will often be unjustified. Government must often address issues of externalities or public goods, which means that the possibility frontier will not be concave. This in turn means that voters' preferences over feasible policies will not be convex.     

Having a say or getting your way? Political choice and satisfaction with democracy

Citizen satisfaction with democracy is greater when parties offer choices that are congruent with voter preferences. But are citizens content with simply having a party that represents their views or does their satisfaction depend on whether that party can also be instrumental in implementing policies? We argue that instrumentality moderates the effect of ideological congruence on democratic satisfaction. Combining an analysis of cross-national survey data with an experimental conjoint design, we find that citizens able to vote for a congruent party with a chance of entering government are more satisfied with democracy, whereas congruence without instrumentality has no such effect.     

Explaining Regional and Local Government: An Empirical Test of the Decentralization Theorem

Decentralization of policy provision is omnipresent yet we are not able to sufficiently account for the extent of this phenomenon. The decentralization theorem explains the decentralization of policy provision as a trade‐off between heterogenous preferences, interjurisdictional spillovers (externalities), and economies of scale. Empirical tests of the theorem have been hampered by a measurement problem on the independent as well as on the dependent variable. This article tackles these problems by using a new data set that combines a measure of externalities and scale effects of policies obtained from an expert survey with the actual provision of policies across governmental tiers in 40 countries. The analyses provide an empirical test of the decentralization theorem by showing that decentralization of policy provision is to a large extent determined by functional characteristics of policies and heterogenous preferences but other country‐specific variables, such as democracy, economic development, and European subsidies, also matter.     

How representative are referendums? Evidence from 20 years of Swiss referendums

Direct democracy allows citizens to reverse decisions made by legislatures and even initiate new laws which parliaments are unwilling to pass, thereby, as its proponents argue, leading to more representative policies than would have obtained under a purely representative democracy. Yet, turnout in referendums is usually lower than in parliamentary elections and tends to be skewed towards citizens of high socio-economic status. Consequently, critics of direct democracy argue that referendum outcomes may not be representative of the preferences of the population at large. We test this assertion using a compilation of post-referendum surveys encompassing 148 national referendums held in Switzerland between 1981 and 1999. Uniquely, these surveys also asked non-voters about their opinion on the referendum's subject. Comparing opinion majorities in the surveys against actual referendum outcomes we show that representativeness increases slightly in turnout as well as over time. However, we find only few cases where the outcome would have been more representative even under full turnout vis-a vis a counterfactual representative outcome. Thus, our results are in line with research on the turnout effect in elections: Higher turnout would not radically change the outcome of votes. On balance we find more cases where referendums provided more representative outcomes than cases where the outcome was unrepresentative vis-a-vis representative democracy. Hence, we conclude that, overall, direct democracy seems to improve representation in Switzerland.     

Deliberative Democracy and Social Choice

The paper contrasts the liberal conception of democracy as the aggregation of individual preferences with the deliberative conception of democracy as a process of open discussion leading to an agreed judgement on policy. Social choice theory has identified problems - the arbitrariness of decision rules, vulnerability to strategic voting - which are often held to undermine democratic ideals. Contrary to common opinion, I argue that deliberative democracy is less vulnerable to these difficulties than liberal democracy. The process of discussion tends to produce sets of policy preferences that are 'single peaked'; and within a deliberative setting it may be possible to vary the decision rule according to the nature of the issue to be decided.     

Policy congruence and its impact on satisfaction with democracy

The relationship between what citizens want in terms of policies and what they get from political elites is considered one of the key aspects of representative democracies. Scholars have thus investigated thoroughly the state of citizen-elite congruence in advanced democracies and whether this relationship influences citizens' democratic satisfaction. These studies do show that citizens' assessment of their political system and especially their satisfaction with democracy are importantly influenced by the quality of representation and how close they are to their preferred parties or the government position. In the paper, we build on this literature and consider whether congruence between citizen preferences and policies influences citizens' satisfaction with democracy. This last stage of representation has mostly been overlooked in past research. To address this question, we make use of data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (module 4). Policy congruence is measured based on respondent answers to a series of questions with respect to their preferences on public expenditure in eight policy domains. We also compare the effect of policy congruence to other conventional measures of congruence (e.g. party and government congruence). Our results indicate that this new measure of policy congruence has substantial effect on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy and more so than previous measures of ideological congruence.     

Attitude Change and Policy Decisions: The Case of Norwegian Alcohol Policy

In a democracy, political decisions ought to be based on public opinion. In practice, however, the mechanisms connecting voter preferences and public policy are complex, and it appears that public opinion may be partly policy-shaping and partly shaped by policy. In this article, some of these mechanisms are discussed. The article presents, first, three models of public reactions to policy decisions. These models are then applied in an analysis of the liberal trends in Norwegian alcohol policy as well as attitudes towards this policy. The results are consistent with a "consumer model", where citizens evaluate public policy according to their preferences, as well as a "support model", where they tend to follow and support decisions made by political leaders. A "discontent model", where implementation brings about less acceptance of a policy, is not supported by the data.     

Military Policies and the State System as Impediments to Democracy

Military policies impose severe limits on democracy and call into question the viability of the liberal democratic state. Military mentality undermines democratic culture; the complexity of warfare defies public understanding; speed required in decision-making prevents public debate; secrecy misleads the public while often disguising executive abuse of power; vested interests in high military expenditure skew political processes; and concentration of power among a few obstructs democratic participation. Even state sovereignty, which military policies bolster, obstructs democracy because interdependence requires governments to be held accountable, through transnational law and institutions, to 'foreign' as well as 'domestic' citizens since both are affected by national decisions.     

The Empires Strike Back: Is the Internet Corporatizing Rather than Democratizing Policy Processes?

For at least a decade, scholars have sought ways to remedy citizen dissatisfaction with representative democracy. Recently, the development and deployment of the Internet has been heralded as a technical solution to this problem. Observers often base their optimism on analysis of the Internet's impact on elections and public comment processes. Yet elections do not generate the policies that people resent—policy processes do. So far, we know little about the Internet's role in this critical social activity. This article provides a framework for locating the Internet's impact on policy processes and presents findings from two case studies on "Internet-enabled" policy making. The cases suggest that the Internet will not fix what ails representative democracy. Indeed, the Internet may only reinforce the much-resented organizational dominance of politics. Reconnecting politics with society is still primarily the work of organizational and institutional reformers, not hardware and software engineers.
Liberal representative democracy models appear to have a built-in bias against citizens in disorganized or informal sectors that are not highly focused, in contrast to those driven by single issues. Powerful lobby groups are able to mobilize resources and influence government agendas for their own causes, while groups without resources or a single focus have no mechanism for influencing government policies and processes. The imbalance created by lobbying is probably one of the most serious issues confronting current liberal representative democracy models.— Kakabadse, Kakabadse, and Kouzmin (2003, 48)     

A Decision Theoretic Model of Public Opinion: Guns, Butter, and European Common Defense

Why do individuals support the public policies they do? We argue that individuals can have quite sophisticated policy preferences and that not correctly modeling those preferences can lead to critically misspecified empirical models. To substantiate this position we derive and test a decision‐theoretic model that relies upon three critical assumptions: (1) policies affect the provision of multiple goods about which individuals care; (2) individuals have diminishing returns to scale in those goods; and (3) preferences over at least some subset of those goods are correlated. Using this model, we demonstrate that arbitrarily small secondary policy effects can confound predictions over primary policy effects. Thus, not considering even arbitrarily small policy effects can cause one to conclude that evidence is consistent with one's theory when in fact it is inconsistent or vice versa. Testing this theory on support for forming a European common defense, we find evidence consistent with our model.     

The influence of direct democracy on the shadow economy

We analyze, both theoretically and empirically, the influence of direct democratic institutions on the size and development of shadow economies. Our model suggests that, as the extent of direct democracy increases, implemented fiscal policies more nearly reflect the preferences of citizens and so reduce their incentives to operate in the informal sector. This theory implies a negative relationship between the extent of direct democracy and the size of the country’s shadow economy. We also theorize that direct democracy has a greater effect in reducing the informal sector when the former is at low or intermediate values and when the electoral system is characterized by a larger district magnitude. An empirical investigation of a sample of 57 democracies confirms our model’s predictions.     

Shaping Local Councillor Preferences: Party Politics,Committee Structure and Social Background1

The preferences of politicians are crucial in a representative democracy. In order to change policy, voters must elect politicians who prefer to do so. Party affiliation may signal preferences to voters, but preferences are also shaped by institutional factors, such as committee membership and social background. This article assesses whether political, institutional or social background explanations best explain spending preferences, based on a survey of 1,200 Danish municipal councillors. Simulations of the relative effect of such variables show that party membership is the most important explanation of spending preferences. Social background, including age, gender, occupation and education, has limited impact, but female, young and better-educated politicians are likely to prefer higher spending. The committee structure is more important. Standing committee membership and seniority have a substantial positive effect on preferences. Although spending advocacy does exist, guardians are harder to find. Even though the members of the economic committee are responsible for the overall economic situation, spending preferences among these politicians are not systematically different.     

Predispositions and the Political Behavior of American Economic Elites: Evidence from Technology Entrepreneurs

Economic elites regularly seek to exert political influence. But what policies do they support? Many accounts implicitly assume economic elites are homogeneous and that increases in their political power will increase inequality. We shed new light on heterogeneity in economic elites' political preferences, arguing that economic elites from an industry can share distinctive preferences due in part to sharing distinctive predispositions. Consequently, how increases in economic elites' influence affect inequality depends on which industry's elites are gaining influence and which policy issues are at stake. We demonstrate our argument with four original surveys, including the two largest political surveys of American economic elites to date: one of technology entrepreneurs—whose influence is burgeoning—and another of campaign donors. We show that technology entrepreneurs support liberal redistributive, social, and globalistic policies but conservative regulatory policies—a bundle of preferences rare among other economic elites. These differences appear to arise partly from their distinctive predispositions.     

Retrospective ideological representation and its impact on democratic satisfaction*

Congruence between government policies and citizen preferences is a key element that increases the quality of democracy. While scholars have shown that governments generally adopt ideological positions and propose policies close to citizen preferences, they have neglected to consider whether citizens respond to promises or to actual enactments. The paper addresses this gap in two ways. First, we propose a new measure that captures how close a citizen is on average to the policies enacted by the incumbent government, namely retrospective ideological representation – the ideological distance between the position of a respondent and the incumbent government at the end of its term in office. We show that this measure captures retrospective information associated with governments’ actions and in particular whether the government increases or decreases social spending during its mandate period. Second, we show that retrospective ideological representation has a substantial impact on citizens’ democratic satisfaction and greater than prospective ideological representation – an established measure of congruence – which is the ideological distance between the positions of a respondent and the elected government after an election.     

Direct Democracy and its Critics: Support for Direct Democracy and ‘Stealth’ Democracy in Finland

In this article support for direct democracy and for stealth democracy in Finland is analysed. Stealth democracy represents a step towards a democracy in which there would be even less citizen involvement than in the representative form of today's democracy. The authors found that both options gained significant support among the Finnish electorate. Additionally, they found that it is mostly the same variables that contribute to the probability of citizens being supporters of either direct democracy or stealth democracy. It is the people with less education, who do not know much about politics and who feel that the current system does not respond to citizens' needs, that want change. The direction of change appears to be a matter of secondary interest. Political ideology affects which of the two options respondents favour. Right-wing citizens are more likely to favour stealth democracy. Citizens leaning to the left are more interested in direct democracy.     

Democracy through Multilevel Governance? The Implementation of the Structural Funds in South Yorkshire

This article considers the democratic qualities of multilevel governance at the stage of policy implementation closest to the ground, involving local residents and organizations. Drawing on a case study of the structural funds in South Yorkshire (United Kingdom), it puts forward three models of democracy through which to evaluate the democratic credentials of multilevel governance. The case study illustrates that among the expected complexity and technocracy at this stage of policymaking, there are also experiments in local democracy that have not previously been identified in the academic literature. As such, in the context of deep multilevel governance, there is evidence that while traditional mechanisms of accountability may be undermined, other mechanisms may provide a valuable alternative.     

Electoral Ambiguity and Political Representation

We introduce a Downsian model in which policy‐relevant information is revealed to the elected politician after the election. The electorate benefits from giving the elected politician discretion to adapt policies to his information. But limits on discretion are desirable when politicians do not share the electorate's policy preferences. Optimal political representation generally consists of a mixture of the delegate (no discretion) and trustee (full discretion) models. Ambiguous electoral platforms are essential for achieving beneficial representation. Nevertheless, electoral competition does not ensure optimal representation: The winning candidate's platform is generally overly ambiguous. While our theory rationalizes a positive correlation between ambiguity and electoral success, it shows that the relationship need not be causal.