Representative democracy relies on elections and party government. Parties play a key role to the extent that they aggregate citizens’ preferences and that they organize political competition. This in turn implies that parties, once in power, implement the programme they were elected for. There is a growing literature arguing that it is increasingly difficult for governments to implement their electoral programmes for a variety of reasons. Growing international constraints have limited government autonomy in general. As the electorate has become more dispersed and party membership has shrunk, it has, moreover, become more difficult for parties to respond to voters. Greater electoral volatility has further complicated things. As a consequence of these trends, the distinctiveness of government parties is said to have decreased. And this, in turn, could explain the decline in turnout and the rise of populist parties. This conclusion, however, is based on limited data and analyses. This chapter calls for renewed study of competition between parties and election-to-policy linkages. It suggests revisiting the thesis of mandate decline using new empirical data, adopting an agenda-setting perspective.
Interregional tax competition and intraregional political competition: The optimal provision of public goods under representative democracy
