Electoral Competition, Participation, and Government Responsiveness in Mexico

In this article I test two competing visions about how democracy produces responsive government. Electoral theories of democracy posit that elected governments are responsive to public demands because citizens are able to sanction bad politicians and select good ones. Participatory theories attribute responsiveness to a citizenry's ability to articulate demands and pressure government through a wider range of political action. I test hypotheses derived from these two approaches, using an original dataset that combines electoral, socioeconomic, and public-financial indicators for Mexico's 2,400 municipalities, from 1989 to 2000. The data show that electoral competition has no effect on municipal government performance. But the results are consistent with the hypothesis that nonelectoral participation causes improved performance. Thus, I suggest that the quality of municipal government in Mexico depends on an engaged citizenry and cooperation between political leaders and their constituents, rather than the threat of electoral punishment. I recommend that scholars broaden the study of government responsiveness to account for participatory strategies of political influence and critically assess the claims of those who would promote elections as a cure-all for poor democratic performance.     

Strategic Party Government: Party Influence in Congress, 1789–2000

Why does the influence of Congressional parties fluctuate over time? Building on prevailing answers, we develop a model, Strategic Party Government, which highlights the electoral motives of legislative parties and the strategic interaction between parties. We test this theory using the entire range of House and Senate party behavior from 1789 to 2000 and find that the strategic behavior of parties complements members' preferences as an explanation for variation in party influence. Specifically, the strongest predictors of one party's voting unity are the unity of the opposing party and the difference between the parties in the preceding year. Moreover, we find strong links between party behavior in Congress and electoral outcomes: an increase in partisan influence on legislative voting has adverse electoral costs, while winning contested votes has electoral benefits.     

Canadian Federal-Provincial Overlap and Presumed Government Inefficiency

It is often claimed that overlapping government activity inCanada's federal system causes significant government inefficiency.The three major studies on the subject have demonstrated theexistence of extensive overlap, but they resort to qualitativearguments and anecdotal evidence to conclude either that overlapcauses significant government inefficiency (the traditionalprovincial position) or that overlap is fairly well managed(the traditional federal position). Thus, the debate about overlapremains essentially a debate about federal and provincial power,not about efficiency. This is apparently unavoidable, due tothe difficulty of measuring the effect of overlap on efficiency.