Are mandates obsolete?

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-24
Author(s):  
Emiliano Grossman ◽  
Isabelle Guinaudeau
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Limited Data ◽  
Party Membership ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Electoral Volatility ◽  
Limited Government

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.

Self-Structuring in Artificial "Chimps" Offers New Hypotheses for Male Grouping in Chimpanzees

Behaviour ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 130 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 229-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irenaeus J.A. Te Boekhorst ◽  
Paulien Hogeweg
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Territorial Defense ◽  
Party Membership ◽  
Party Size ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Competition For Food ◽  
Self Organisation ◽  
The One ◽  
Artificial World

AbstractChimpanzees live in societies that are characterised both by disorder and order. On the one hand, party size fluctuates in a randomlike fashion and party membership is unpredictable ; on the other hand, fundamental party structures are apparent; males are often in all-male parties whereas females remain mostly solitary. The customary sociobiological explanation is based on the assumptions that 1) competition for food favors solitariness (especially in females); 2) chimpanzee males share the costs of territorial defense against rivals from neighbouring communities and 3) genetical relatedness among males within a community compensates for fitness losses due to their competition for food and females. We point to some theoretical flaws in the reasoning that forms the basis of the current neo-Darwinistic model and to the lack of empirical data concerning male relatedness. Most importantly, chimpanzee-like party structures emerge by self-organisation in an artificial "world" in which "CHIMPs" do nothing more than searching for food and mates, without requiring any of the assumptions of the sociobiological model.

On the causes of electoral volatility in Asia since 1948

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882110468
Author(s):  
Don S Lee ◽  
Fernando Casal Bertoa
Keyword(s):  
Party Systems ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Electoral Volatility ◽  
Essential Condition ◽  
Additional Finding ◽  
Healthy Functioning ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Detrimental Impact ◽  
Historical Legacies ◽  
The Way

Electoral stability has been viewed as an essential condition for the healthy functioning of representative democracy. However, there is little agreement in the literature about what shapes the stability of the electorate in general nor much attention paid to that of the Asian electorates in particular. We propose historical legacies, uniquely testable in Asia, as central determinants, but also test for conventional factors examined in other regions. By analyzing more than 150 elections in 19 post-WWII Asian democracies, we find that certain types of authoritarian (military or personalist) and colonial (non-British) legacies have a detrimental impact on the stabilization of the electorate, while some of the findings from other regions apply also to Asia. Our additional finding that such effects of historical legacies, particularly authoritarian interludes, are attenuated and cease to be significant with sufficient maturation of democracy, has important implications for the way party systems develop and democracies consolidate.

The Art of Political Science: Spatial Diagrams as Iconic and Revelatory

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry E. Brady
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Voting Systems ◽  
Demand Curves ◽  
The World ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Better Than

Spatial diagrams of politics could and should be iconic for political science in much the same way as supply-and-demand curves are in economics. Many fundamental problems of political science can be connected with them, and many different concepts—such as ideological constraint, cross-pressures, framing, agenda-setting, political competition, voting systems, and party systems, to name just a few—can be illuminated through spatial diagrams. Spatial diagrams raise questions and provide insights. They suggest political maneuvers, possible realignments, and political problems. They provide us with revealing images that aid memory and facilitate analysis. They are a powerful way to think about politics, and we could not do better than to feature them in our textbooks, to use them in our research, and to exhibit them as our brand—as our distinctive way of thinking about how the world works

Partisan agenda control in the US house: A theoretical exploration

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery A Jenkins ◽  
Nathan W Monroe
Keyword(s):  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
Voter Model ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Agenda Control ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Government ◽  
The Us ◽  
Median Voter Model ◽  
Party Members

While a number of scholars have focused on the importance of partisan agenda control in the US House, few have examined its uneven consequences within the majority party. In this paper, we explore ‘counterfactual’ utility distributions within the majority party, by comparing policy outcomes under a party-less median voter model to policy outcomes under party-based positive and negative agenda control models. We show that the distribution of policy losses and benefits resulting from agenda control are quite similar for both the positive and negative varieties. In both cases, moderate majority-party members are made worse off by the exercise of partisan agenda control, while those to the extreme side of the majority-party median benefit disproportionately. We also consider the benefit of agenda control for the party as a whole, by looking at the way changes in majority-party homogeneity affect the summed utility across members. Interestingly, we find that when the distance between the floor and majority-party medians decreases, the overall value of positive and negative agenda control diminishes. However, we also find support for the ‘conditional party government’ notion that, as majority-party members’ preferences become more similar, they have an increased incentive to grant agenda-setting power to their leaders.

scholarly journals Determinants of the Policy Impact of Analytical Communities in Russian Regions: Cases of Karelia, Tatarstan and Saratov

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Zaytsev ◽  
Nina Belyaeva
Keyword(s):  
Policy Change ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Policy Impact ◽  
The Political ◽  
Russian Regions ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Regional Politics ◽  
Political Status

Abstract This paper evaluates the policy impact of analytical communities in three Russian regions (Karelia, Tatarstan and Saratov). Based on the existing methods to assess the political power of think tanks, the authors develop a method to evaluate this impact. The authors test this method using the empirical data and findings from interviews, workshops with representatives of analytical communities of the three regions, and from observations and assessments of experts in regional politics. In conclusion, the authors argue that the capacity of analytical communities to impact policy change in a region depends on the level of political competition and pluralism and democratic institutions in the region; the level of consolidation of the analytical community, its autonomous political status and authority.

The Myth of Direct Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-78
Author(s):  
Hélène Landemore
Keyword(s):  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Delegation Of Authority ◽  
Viable Solution

This chapter examines the alternative to representative democracy sometimes defended by its democratic critics: direct (or unmediated) democracy. For all its appeal, direct democracy, whether face-to-face or enabled by new technologies, is not a viable solution to the problems of representative democracy because it is either feasible but normatively undesirable or, if it is defined in normatively desirable terms, entirely unfeasible. The chapter pushes back against three common beliefs: the Rousseauvian (originally Hobbesian) idea that sovereignty is essentially about having the final say; the historical claim that representation was rendered necessary by the size of mass societies; and the view of Classical Athens as the archetype of a direct democracy. It argues that direct democracy is a false alternative, one that is credible only if one accepts the mistaken Rousseauvian view of sovereignty as limited to having the final say — and a non-deliberative one at that. In the end, direct democracy is parasitic on non-democratic forms of agenda-setting and deliberation, or else must turn representative — i.e., involve a delegation of authority — to some degree. Even Classical Athens was not the paragon of “direct” democracy as it is often portrayed and functioned along broadly representative or proto-representative (though non-electoral) lines.

scholarly journals Good and Bad Times of Social Innovations: The Case of Universal Basic Income in Finland

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pertti Koistinen ◽  
Johanna Perkiö
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Critical Points ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Social Security Reform ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Social Innovations

AbstractThis article draws on innovation and agenda-setting theories to identify critical points in the realization of basic income in Finland. Our empirical data comprise 13 models of either unconditional basic income or social security reform proposals with some similarity to basic income. The models examined were published in Finland between 1984 and 2011. Using these data, we build a conceptual framework that enables us to discuss the role of the content, players, political and macro-economic context, and public interpretations in the successes and failures of the basic income initiatives.

Institutionalizing Interactive Political Leadership

2020 ◽  
pp. 133-153
Author(s):  
Eva Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
The Political ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Policy Application

A key factor that conditions the political leadership of elected politicians is the institutional structure of representative democracy. Political institutions constrain as well as enable political leadership. They regulate what politicians can do, and grant them the authority and legitimacy needed to act in the name of the members of the political community. Then, how do the institutions of representative democracy condition the performance of interactive political leadership? Chapter 10 shows that although the formal structure of representative democracy tends to encourage political competition, the non-formal political institutions promote political bargaining, negotiation and collaboration between political elites. Although neither the formal nor the non-formal institutions promote interaction between politicians and citizens, it takes relatively small-scale reforms to enable politicians to perform interactive political leadership. Political leaders are not only institution-takers but also institution-makers and it is their prerogative to improve the institutional conditions for performing interactive political leadership in representative democracies. A review of recent institutional reforms testifies to a growing interest among politicians in promoting dialogue between politicians and citizens around agenda-setting, policy innovation, and policy application.

Public Choice Theory. A Textbook. Chapter 6. Public Choice under Representative Democracy: Political Competition

2003 ◽  
pp. 128-153
Author(s):  
R. Nureev
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Public Choice ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Public Choice Theory

The specifics of pubic choice under representative democracy are considered in the sixth chapter of the textbook. Two definitions of representative democracy are distinguished. The concept of political competition is defined. The types of political parties and political systems are analysed. The model of two-party competition is characterized. The chapter also includes further readings, control tests and questions.

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