Democratic Responsiveness Research Articles

Can sport clubs be represented? Pre-packed policy advocacy and the trade-offs for democratic responsiveness

ABSTRACT Federative sport organisations are increasingly conducting advocacy vis-à-vis public authorities on behalf of their membership, but the meaning and implications of such interest representation are unclear. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore how representatives of sport federations understand interests in the context of sport advocacy, and the transformative effects on future representational and wider democratic practices that may follow from such conceptualisations. Drawing theoretically on a distinction between attached and objective interests, and empirically on interviews with 46 Swedish Regional Sport Federation representatives, we show that interests are understood as best derived from central policy documents and edicts rather than clubs’ immediate wishes. This centralised sourcing of advocacy issues may be explained with reference to the legitimacy representatives believe that the internal democratic system bestows on processes of issue prioritisation. In the absence of bottom-up practices outside of general assemblies to channel federated clubs’ interests, this issue prioritisation strategy involves a shift from accommodating interests attached to clubs to promoting understandings of sport’s collective and ‘objective’ interest. The significance of this shift is twofold. First, it enables the justification of a professionalised, bureaucratic and centralised advocacy dedicated to increasing advocacy impact rather than ‘downward’ representational authorisation and accountability. Second, it may shape what is perceived as legitimate subsequent representation, including the appropriate participatory practices associated with advocacy. More generally, if clubs and their members come to understand their interests as objective, their capacity and will to formulate their interests as attached may be further weakened.

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.

Between Participation and Capture in International Rule-Making: The WHO Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors

Following demands for more democratic legitimacy and given the growing dependency of international organizations (IOs) on external information and resources, in the past decade and a half, IOs have opened up their rule-making to non-state actor (NSA) participation. In a broad sense, this participation trend tracks the 20th-century administrative law revolution in many democracies, whereby an expanding and more powerful administrative state engendered greater demands for transparency and citizen participation in rule-making. Such opening-up would indeed appear to improve the democratic responsiveness of IOs, yet what the literature has largely ignored so far is that it also increases the risk that rule-making becomes captured by the interests of narrow groups. Three main types of capture risks have become particularly prevalent in international rule-making: capture caused by the dependency of IOs on the information held by business entities, capture caused by the over-representation of business entities, and capture caused by the financial contributions of NSAs to IOs. The recent Boeing 737 Max scandal highlights the potentially tragic consequences of capture. In 2016, the WHO became one of the first IOs to adopt a comprehensive policy for encouraging NSA engagement while simultaneously mitigating the accompanying risks—the Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors (FENSA). In this article, I explore how and whether FENSA prevents capture risks — on paper and in practice. Further, NSA engagement is a central feature of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and of the 2016 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and many IOs are adapting their strategic approaches and work plans towards more NSA engagement. In the process, the IOs are considering ways to develop or revise outdated policies to address the risks of engagement, and they will likely look to FENSA for inspiration. FENSA thus also serves as a case from which I seek to draw more general lessons as to the capability of such engagement reforms to prevent capture in international rule-making.

Opportunity for renewal or disruptive force? How artificial intelligence alters democratic politics

The increasing adoption of AI profoundly changes the informational foundations of societies. What does this mean for the functioning of liberal democracy, specifically in terms of responsiveness and accountability? The present paper addresses this question by discussing how capabilities of AI affect the informational requirements of the democratic process. Based on a systems theory perspective, the consequences of AI are shown to be wide-ranging. AI can reduce or increase information deficits of both citizens and decision-makers on the input, throughout, and output level of the political system. While the challenges that AI creates for democratic responsiveness and accountability have a novel technological dimension, they are nonetheless in continuity with existing transparency and accountability problems. Avoiding a negative impact will require institutionalizing suitable governance mechanisms – a task that is challenging already at the throughout and output level, but particularly difficult, and important, at the input level of politics.

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.

Responding to functionalist Incentives? Exploring the evolution of regional organisations after the end of the Cold War

ABSTRACT The number of regional organisations (ROs) has increased over time. While initially most of the 76 ROs were created to foster economic integration, most have broadened their policy competencies considerably over time. Yet there are distinct geographical patterns in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. This paper explores whether and under what conditions ROs in different regions respond to functionalist incentives in adapting their policy competencies. To this end, the paper theorises how different forms of problem-pressure, past policy treaty changes, existing policy competencies, RO size and RO composition can trigger political action to broaden RO policy mandates. The analysis reveals that on a global level, RO policy scope expansion is driven by a limited prior scope, democratic responsiveness, RO size and socio-economic capacities, while economic and security problem pressure inhibits ROs from obtaining further policy competencies. In addition, the paper evidences regional specificities.

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

AbstractResearch 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.

Can Government Public Communications Elicit Undue Trust? Exploring the Interaction between Symbols and Substantive Information in Communications

AbstractEffective public communications have been proposed as a remedy for citizens’ distrust in government. Recent studies pointed to the emotional effect of symbolic elements, entangled in government public communications (e.g., logos, images, and celebrities). Still, they did not examine the interaction between these symbols and the substantive information in communications about bureaucracies’ performance and policies. Exploring this interaction is important for understanding the theoretical mechanisms underlying the effect of symbolic communication on citizens’ trust. Also, it is essential to assess symbols’ potency to unduly compensate for unfavorable or logically unpersuasive information, and enable public organizations to escape justified public criticism. Building on the social psychology Elaboration Likelihood Model, I theorize that symbols may increase citizens’ trust by conducing citizens to pay less attention to logically unpersuasive information, and thus offsetting its negative effect. I test this indirect mechanism via a large survey experiment, focusing on the Israeli Environment Protection Ministry. The experimental results support the research hypotheses and suggest that the effect of symbolic elements is stronger when communications include logically unpersuasive information. I discuss the implications of these findings for democratic responsiveness and accountability.

포퓰리즘 부상의 배경으로서 민주주의의 응답성 결여 : 2010년대 독일을 사례로

포퓰리즘 부상의 배경으로서 민주주의의 응답성 결여 : 2010년대 독일을 사례로

The Limits of a Commitment? Public Responses to Asylum Policy in Sweden over Time

It is hardly an exaggeration to claim that one of the most turbulent political areas in recent years has been asylum policy, which has disclosed a rapidly increasing inflow of asylum seekers, and, in many countries, has been followed by fierce media discussion and political controversies. In Sweden, this development has been heated as the Swedish self‐image is one of providing generous policies, which is also reflected in terms of strong refugee policy. The article uses this example to explore assumptions about public responsiveness in previous policy feedback literature and to examine the link between citizens' attitudes towards immigration and changes in asylum policy output, measured as asylums granted, over time in the period 1990–2015. It focuses especially on the link through which citizens become aware of policy output, operationalized as media visualization, and find that including media reveals a suppressed relationship between policy output and public attitudes. The relationship is negative and thus confirms the assumptions of the thermostatic models. Second, the article shows that feedback is mediated by political orientation: People defining themselves politically as right‐oriented respond with negative feedback when the number of granted asylums increases, while left‐oriented people do not change their attitudes. Based on these findings it is concluded, first, that analyses of democratic responsiveness need to incorporate a clear measure of the link by which exogenous factors become visible. Second, the importance needs to be stressed of considering important cleavages in the population in order to display responsiveness processes fairly.

More of the Same: Discursive Reactions of Members of Knesset to the 2011 ‘Social Protest’ in Israel

The 2011 ‘Social Protest’ in Israel was motivated by discontent with the outcomes of neo-liberal economic policies. Moreover, during rallies protest leaders used explicit counter-neo-liberal ideas and discourse. Nonetheless, this article shows that Members of Knesset (the Israeli parliament) used neo-liberal ideas and discourse more following the protest than they had done before its outbreak. Relying on recent theoretical developments emphasizing the importance of ideas and discourse in social and political analysis, I account for Members of Knesset’s ideas and discourse through analyzing explanation clauses accompanying private member bills. The article concludes by suggesting that the protest may have turned neo-liberal ideas from a means used by economic experts to promote economic liberalization to a means used by politicians to demonstrate their democratic responsiveness to citizens’ economic demands.

Legislative Capacity and Credit Risk

AbstractLegislatures differ in their institutional capacity to draft and enact policy. While strong legislatures can increase the congruence of policy outcomes to the electorate's preferences, they can also inject uncertainty into markets with their ability to alter the political economic landscape. We argue that this uncertainty will manifest in a state's ability to borrow and hypothesize a negative relationship between legislative capacity and creditworthiness. Using ratings of general obligation bonds issued by the American states over nearly two decades and data on the institutional capacity of state legislative assemblies, we find support for the claim that having a legislature that is better equipped to affect policy change increases credit risk evaluations. The results we present broaden our understanding of the importance of legislative institutions, the determinants of credit risk, and the economic implications of democratic responsiveness.

On the Theory of Parties

The theory of parties put forward by scholars associated with the University of California at Los Angeles argues that political parties are best viewed as coalitions of intense policy demanders. These policy demanders use their control of nomination processes to select candidates loyal to the groups’ shared policy priorities. By highlighting the role of groups, this theory has made a major contribution to our understanding of party politics, breathing new life into important debates about the limitations of democratic responsiveness in the United States. The theory, however, leaves a number of theoretical and empirical issues unresolved. The “invisible primary” hypothesis has performed poorly in recent presidential elections. More importantly, we argue that the next generation of party theorizing needs to account for the distinctive roles and capacities of officeholders and voters, and to reengage the idea of formal parties as institutional intermediaries between groups, politicians, and voters.

Responsiveness, support, and responsibility: How democratic responsiveness facilitates responsible government

Representative democracy entails governments that are both responsive and responsible. Mair argued that political parties find it increasingly difficult to balance these two tasks. With an increase in international commitments and interdependence, governments cannot always follow the wishes of their citizens but need to be responsible instead. Our study examines the responsiveness–responsibility link from the angle of citizen perceptions. We argue that when governments are seen as responsive they build a “buffer” of support, allowing them to make decisions that are not necessarily responsive but possibly responsible. By being responsive, governments build a reservoir of goodwill, which they can use to survive more difficult periods. Using data from the 2012 European Social Survey, we test whether perceived responsiveness feeds into this reservoir and whether this reservoir consequently increases perceived responsibility. We find support for this link, suggesting that responsiveness and responsibility do not need to be trade-offs but can complement each other.

Gender Policy Feedback: Perceptions of Sex Equity, Title IX, and Political Mobilization among College Athletes

Public policies invariably confer or deny benefits to particular citizens. How citizens respond to relevant policies has fundamental implications for democratic responsiveness. We study the beliefs of a core constituency of one of the most celebrated sex non-discrimination policies in U.S. history: Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Using a novel survey of college student-athletes, we find strong support for the spirit of the policy, with the vast majority of respondents reporting the opinion that there “should” be equity. Concurrently, student-athletes also perceive mal-distribution among status quo resources and opportunities and believe that redistribution is needed. Furthermore, they are willing to take political action to improve equality. Consistent with our expectations, these beliefs are particularly salient for women and those who perceive persistent sex discrimination in society. Our results reveal “positive policy feedback” among policy beneficiaries of Title IX who mobilize to seek equity in athletics. The dissatisfaction among policy beneficiaries raises questions about democratic responsiveness (e.g., to whom are policymakers and leaders in college athletics responding?) and highlights the political nature of college athletics.

The Public Cost of Unilateral Action

AbstractScholarship on democratic responsiveness focuses on whether political outcomes reflect public opinion but overlooks attitudes toward how power is used to achieve those policies. We argue that public attitudes toward unilateral action lead to negative evaluations of presidents who exercise unilateral powers and policies achieved through their use. Evidence from two studies supports our argument. In three nationally representative survey experiments conducted across a range of policy domains, we find that the public reacts negatively when policies are achieved through unilateral powers instead of through legislation passed by Congress. We further show these costs are greatest among respondents who support the president's policy goals. In an observational study, we show that attitudes toward unilateral action in the abstract affect how respondents evaluate policies achieved through unilateral action by presidents from Lincoln to Obama. Our results suggest that public opinion may constrain presidents' use of unilateral powers.

A Distorting Mirror: Major Media Coverage of Americans’ Tax Policy Preferences

Over the last four decades, Americans have consistently told pollsters that they favor higher taxes on business and the wealthy, even as tax policy has moved sharply in the other direction. Political scientists and political commentators regularly assume that elected officials respond to the preferences of citizens, despite recent findings that the correlations between public preferences and policy outcomes disappear when accounting for the preferences of the wealthy. This paper quantitatively assesses the failure of democratic responsiveness on this issue. It examines coverage of American’s tax policy preferences in two major national newspapers, the New York Times and USA Today. Both newspapers exhibit nearly identical behavior: they privilege elite sources, ignore the voices of ordinary citizens, and misrepresent public preferences. They also highlight expressions of public opposition to taxes and suppress evidence of persistent public support for higher taxes on business and the wealthy.

Tales of accountability: a Q-method study of discourses amongst Tanzanian members of parliament

ABSTRACTThe hallmark of accountability in a democracy centres on the way the elected parliament holds the executive to account. If the parliament does not perform its oversight role effectively, lower authorities would have fewer incentives to do the same vis-à-vis local executives. In this article we therefore ask whether or not different meanings of accountability can be discerned amongst Tanzanian Members of Parliament (MPs). In our Q-method research we found four clearly identifiable discourses on accountability amongst Tanzanian MPs:Partycrats;My Electorate's Advocates;Frustrated Account Holders; andPragmatic Account Holders.We understand MPs discourses within the broader context of political clientelism and we argue that this combination of discourses, or accountability culture, enables the executive to rule in semi-autocratic ways. Even if opposition parties would obtain a parliamentary majority, this accountability culture stands in the way of achieving greater democratic responsiveness.