Electoral proportionality, multi-party cabinets and policy responsiveness

Abstract

This research note recasts the relationship between electoral proportionality and government responsiveness to public needs, and emphasizes the limits of studies that look at the ideological congruence between cabinets and voters as the dependent variable, and assume that this congruence translates into policy responsiveness. The translation of public will into policy is contingent on many other system characteristics, some of which are by-products of electoral rules. This note focuses on the effect of party fragmentation on the way cabinets adjust their spending behaviour to ideological shifts within the populace. Party fragmentation is a negative externality of proportional representation, with the potential to neutralize/overturn its positive effects on representation. Building on the “wars of attrition” literature I show that multi-party cabinets have a difficult time reducing spending when the public wants it, which decreases the overall responsiveness of government to ideological shifts. The empirical tests using spending data in 17 Western democracies between 1962 and 1991 support these claims.