Learning to be Moved: The Modes of Democratic Responsiveness

Being responsive to the experiences, ideas, and stories of others is an essential trait for democratic citizens. Responsiveness promotes the general welfare, it shows respect for others, and allows for what Tony Laden has called the social practice of reasoning. Political theorists have shown how responsiveness is a middle ground between dominance and acquiescence, where citizens show a willingness to be moved by those around them. Responsiveness is tested, though, when citizens interact with those who hold what are thought to be immoral or unjust beliefs. The key question: Is it possible to engage responsively with those who hold morally suspect beliefs, to be legitimately “moved” by those around us, without necessarily acquiescing to the moral problems? We argue that such engagement is both possible and desirable. There are at least five different ways to be moved by others in a productive, civic sense. We describe these modes, explain their moral depth, and give some examples. Civic educators should be aware of these modes and teach students how they can be manifest in democratic life.

Democratization and the Franchise

Understanding why elites extend the franchise is one of the central questions in comparative politics. However, most theories fail to account for subsequent extensions of voting rights to once-excluded groups, including women, racial and religious minorities, and the poor. This article reviews three new books in comparative politics that focus on the struggle for voting rights and representation in the first-wave democracies. These books challenge classic assumptions and show that democratization is punctuated by ongoing struggles over inclusion that continue to this day. Together, these books contribute to debates over modernization theory, democratic responsiveness, and the use of the United States as a case in comparative analysis.

Can local government by lottery increase democratic responsiveness?

In recent years, scholars have paid significant attention to the role of decentralisation in restraining government power and budgetary excess. Yet growth in taxation and debt in OECD countries suggests that such measures have often had a limited effect in taming ‘local Leviathans’. In response, this Research Provocation sets out a bold alternative vision, advocating the use of sortition ‐ the deliberate introduction of arationality and chance into local policy decisions ‐ in order to disrupt ingrained power imbalances and enhance democratic participation. It argues that sortition has the potential to provide for greater possibilities for citizens to exercise voice, choice and exit. This in turn, it is argued, can ensure that local government is more responsive to the preferences of ordinary citizens. In making this provocative argument, we offer an important contribution to debates regarding citizen disengagement, democratic malaise and the potential of more deliberative forms of democracy to address such challenges.

Do Fairer Elections Increase the Responsiveness of Politicians?

Leveraging novel experimental designs and 2,160 months of Constituency Development Fund (CDF) spending by legislators in Ghana, I examine whether and how fairer elections promote democratic responsiveness. The results show that incumbents elected from constituencies that were randomly assigned to intensive election-day monitoring during Ghana’s 2012 election spent 19 percentage points more of their CDFs during their terms in office compared with those elected from constituencies with fewer monitors. Legislators from all types of constituencies are equally present in parliament, suggesting that high levels of monitoring do not cause politicians to substitute constituency service for parliamentary work. Tests of causal mechanisms provide suggestive evidence that fairer elections motivate high performance through incumbents’ expectations of electoral sanction and not the selection of better candidates. The article provides causal evidence of the impact of election integrity on democratic accountability.

Back to the Future: Democratic Responsiveness and the Estimation of Future Public Opinion

Research on the responsiveness of policy to public opinion has infrequently confronted the possibility that re-election seeking politicians’ policy choices may reflect their expectations about future public opinion. This article reports observational and experimental findings from a survey of senior Canadian policy-makers. Results from vignette-based experiments that manipulate the characteristics of current and estimates of future opinion show that policy-makers are responsive to the estimated direction of future opinion, but this relationship is conditional on high estimated future salience. Survey results shed additional light on the role that estimates of future opinion play in policy-making. Combined, these experimental and observational results suggest existing empirical work on policy responsiveness is incomplete.