Organizing democratic choice : party representation over time / Ian Budge ... [and others].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Budge, Ian.

Series:

Comparative politics (Oxford University Press)

Comparative politics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political parties--Public opinion.

Political parties.

Democracy.

Democratization.

Comparative government.

Physical Description:

xvii, 313 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

This bold venture into democratic theory offers a new and reinvigorating thesis for how democracy delivers on its promise of public control over public policy. In theory, popular control could be achieved through a process entirely driven by supply-side politics, with omniscient and strategic political parties converging on the median voter's policy preference at every turn. However, this would imply that there would be no distinguishable political parties (or even any reason for parties to exist) and no choice for a public to make. The more realistic view taken here portrays democracy as an ongoing series of give and take between political parties' policy supply and a mass public's policy demand. Political parties organize democratic choices as divergent policy alternatives, none of which is likely to satisfy the public's policy preferences at any one turn. While the one-off, short-run consequence of a single election often results in differences between the policies that parliaments and governments pursue and the preferences their publics hold, the authors construct theoretical arguments, employ computer simulations, and follow up with empirical analysis to show how, why, and under what conditions democratic representation reveals itself over time. Democracy, viewed as a process rather than a single electoral event, can and usually does forge strong and congruent linkages between a public and its government. This original thesis offers a challenge to democratic pessimists who would have everyone believe that neither political parties nor mass publics are up to the tasks that democracy assigns them. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu (http://www.ecprnet.eu) The Comparative Politics series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.

Contents:

Part I Party Convergence and Beyond

1 Convergence in Context: Simulating Party-Elector Interactions within a Downsian Framework 19

1.1 Overview 19

1.2 The logic of party convergence 20

1.3 Representation through party convergence 23

1.4 Representational consequences of party convergence and divergence compared 26

1.5 Deterministic policy voting 30

1.6 Comparative evidence for policy deterministic voting 33

1.7 Conclusions and overview 40 Appendix: Party divergence and the acceptability of election-driven policy to democratic citizens 41

2 Party Stability, Voting Cycles, and Convergence: Comparative Evidence 53

2.1 Introduction 53

2.2 Electoral endorsement of parties-how stable? 54

2.3 Cycling, democracy, and convergence 61

2.4 The stability and continuity of political parties: a theoretical inconsistency in the convergence thesis 63

2.5 How far do parties actually converge? Comparative evidence 66

2.6 Summary and overview 70

3 Unpacking the Convergence Model 71

3.1 Rationale 71

3.2 Downsian modelling assumptions re-examined 72

3.3 Measuring the connection between popular preferences and public policy: congruence, neutrality, and responsiveness 79

3.4 How parties influence the connection between popular preferences and public policy 84

3.5 Living with non-convergence 86

Part II Party Divergence: Causes and Consequences

4 The Dynamics of Divergence: Ideology, Factionalism, and Representation 91

4.1 Parties, policy, and representation 91

4.2 The parties' role: an overview 96

4.3 Patterns of party movement 97

4.4 Explanations of party policy change 98

4.5 Some representational consequences of party policy movement: voter preferences and government intentions 104

4.6 Party policy behaviour: an overview 109

Part III Representing Voters

5 Identifying Majority Preferences: Median or Plurality Voter? 113

5.1 Decision-making through representative elections: an overview 113

5.2 Party votes as policy endorsements under the possibility of non-policy voting 115

5.3 Voter majority preferences: which position is the carrier? 119

5.4 Reassessing the median and the mode 122

5.5 Identifying majority preferences: endorsement of the median or of the plurality party voter? 126

5.6 What is the difference? Tracking median versus modal voter positions comparatively and temporally 131

5.7 Reflecting the mode and the median in government 136

5.8 What of the median citizen? 141

5.9 Conclusions 143

6 Representation Over Time: Empowering Both Plurality and Median Voter Preferences Through Policy Inertia-A Model and Simulation 145

6.1 Putting it all together 145

6.2 Congruence 147

6.3 The pace of policy change 153

6.4 Implications of slow-paced change 158

6.5 Bringing in comparative evidence 160

6.6 What happens when policy is not left-right and/or uni-dimensional? 167

6.7 Conclusions 169

7 Representation and the Pace of Policy Change: A Comparative Over-time Analysis 170

7.1 Do elections direct policy? 171

7.2 Descriptive analysis 172

7.3 Persistence of explainable regime differences 179

7.4 A unified cross-national, cross-temporal model of democratic policy-making 186

7.5 Estimating congruence, neutrality, and responsiveness from the regression relationships 189

7.6 Conclusion 191

Appendix: Extending the aggregate analysis to defence and foreign policy 193

Part IV Representing Citizens

8 The Nature of Citizen Preferences: Meaningful and Stable? 199

8.1 Introduction 199

8.2 Elector/citizen preferences: meaningful and stable? 202

8.3 Elector/citizen preferences: uni-dimensional, multi-dimensional or both? 207

9 Relating Elector to Voter Preferences 211

9.1 Introduction 211

9.2 Data overview 212

9.3 How well do voters represent electors? (In)congruence and bias 215

9.4 Voter responsiveness to electors 218

9.5 Long-term relationship between elector and voter preferences 221

9.6 Conclusions 225

10 Citizen Preferences and Public Policy 226

10.1 Introduction 226

10.2 Party bracketing of electors 228

10.3 Citizen preferences and public policy in eight countries, 1973-95 229

10.4 Congruence and bias in enacted policy-an overview 242

10.5 A necessary connection? 244

Part V The Representational Process

11 Parties Diverge around Electors-but not too much. Policy Responds-but not too fast 251

11.1 Representational processes: an overview 251

11.2 Representing preferences for change 254

11.3 Spatial representations of policy processes: Does our theory fit them all? And what about cyclic majorities and the median? 258

11.4 Does democracy work? Conclusions and overview 262

12 Partisan Governments, Centrist Preferences: Resolving the Paradox of Party Representation 263

12.1 Introduction: the paradox 263

12.2 Forming governments, losing votes 264

12.3 Citizens and parties in a nation's left-right space 266

12.4 Policy representation 267

12.5 Formalizing the centrist tendencies 271

12.6 Alternation in government 274

12.7 Conclusions 279

13 Representing Representation: A Core Theory for Political Science 281

13.1 Beyond economics and rational choice 281

13.2 Basic considerations for an alternative to economic theorizing 283

13.3 Democratic representation propositionalized 287

13.4 The spatial theory of representation: focus for a science of politics 289.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199654932

019965493X

OCLC:

773671579