| Abstract |
"The critique of liberal democracy has focused mostly on the same issues since the 19th century. Liberal democracy is denounced as an elitist project that deprives the vast majority of the people of any meaningful form of participation. Elites, once elected, will primarily respond to economic interests or serve themselves, rather than represent voters. Elites become increasingly disconnected from the rest of society and access to the sphere of political elites will become increasingly difficult over time. In the context of globalization, they are moreover less and less connected to their countries of origin. The electoral supply is growing increasingly similar, thereby limiting effective choice for voters. Political elites, the media and scholars have voiced increasing concern about the shrinking leeway for elected governments to actively shape policies in times of growing international interdependence, regional integration, budget pressures and political polarization (Boix, 2000; Mair, 2008). Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, recently expressed concern about the fact that Europe had "drawn up rules that people in the member States through elections no longer can change" and that voters "could not anymore influence economic policy by casting their vote." Against this background, electoral promises are essentially cheap talk designed above all to win the election and then quickly forgotten. In most democracies, opinion polls reveal a climate of generalized and growing scepticism towards parties and their promises. Party programs are often presented as a mere instrument of communication. In France, for example, one recent survey reveals that "broken electoral promises" are among the reasons that are most cited by interviewees for loss of confidence in the executive. A non-trivial number of citizens and political actors in virtually all contemporary democracies shares parts or all of this non-exhaustive list of critiques. Many political challengers, especially on the far right, have built their political agenda and their electoral clientele around these criticisms. Increasingly, even mainstream parties have taken up many of these points and there is a growing number of attempts to reform political systems to respond to their perceived or real shortcomings. Many of the typical reforms of the past years, such as reduction of the number of parliamentarians, introduction of popular referenda or instances of deliberative democracy, are motivated by doubts about the functioning of representative democracy. The present book tries to ascertain some of those claims with a focus on the policy relevance of elections. We want to examine whether liberal democracies have really become the deceptive machines that its opponents claim they are. These claims deserve an empirical investigation. How relevant are democratic elections to public policy? This topical question is mostly addressed through the lens of what has been called promissory representation, or mandate responsiveness. Yet, empirical work to date has most often failed to take into account the relationship between party issue competition on the one hand and mandate responsiveness on the other. The very notion of mandate responsiveness has often been defined very partially and requires further elaboration. Our central argument, based on a more comprehensive approach to mandates, is that there is empirical evidence for a significant connection between electoral supply and public policy. We will shed new light on the institutional determinants of mandate representation and show that the situation in most cases has not deteriorated as much as critics pretend"-- Provided by publisher. |
