Degrees of Democracy

Transcription

1 Degrees of Democracy Government Institutions and the Opinion-Policy Link Stuart N. Soroka McGill University Montréal, Québec Christopher Wlezien Temple University Philadelphia Abstract A large and growing body of research demonstrates a correspondence between public opinion and policy behavior. Almost all of this research has focused on the US, however. Do similar patterns obtain in other countries? Or is the US unique? This paper represents one step towards answering these questions. We develop a theoretical model implying differences in representation across countries owing to differences in government institutions. Most importantly, we argue that (1) policymakers are less responsive in parliamentary systems than in presidential systems, and (2) public responsiveness to policy change is diminished in federal rather than unitary systems. We then test these propositions, using directly comparable longitudinal measures of public preferences and government spending in the US, UK, and Canada. In the process, we draw conclusions about the success of these countries government institutions, and distill broader implications for the functioning of modern democracies. Paper prepared for presentation at Dartmouth College, November, Portions of this research were presented at 4 th General Conference of the European Consortium of Political Research, Pisa, 2007, and the Annual Meetings of the Southwest Political Science Association, Albuquerque 2007, the International Political Science Association, Fukuoka, Japan, June, 2006, the Southwest Political Science Association, Corpus Christi, Texas, March, 2004, the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, August, 2003, the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 2003, the Canadian Political Science Association, Halifax, June 2003, the Political Studies Association, Edinburgh, April 2002, the American Political Science Association, Boston, August-September 2002, the Annual Conference of the Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties Group, Salford, UK, September 2002, and Harvard University, Indiana University, the Juan March Institute, Queen s University, the University of British Columbia, Sciences Po Paris (CEVIPOF), and the University of Washington. We are thankful to various audiences and discussants for comments, and especially Kevin Arceneaux, Keith Banting, Frank Baumgartner, Chris Carman, Diana Evans, Peter John, Martin Johnson, Bryan Jones, Mark Kayser, Jose Maria Maravall, Iain McLean, Jose Ramon Montero, Robert Shapiro, Robert Stein, and James Stimson. Related project papers are available online at

2 Perhaps the primary concern of empirical democratic theory is the relationship between public preferences and public policy. Scholars have stressed the importance of responsive rule the correspondence between citizens preferences and government actions in democratic governance (the literature is massive, but see, e.g., Pitkin 1967; Dahl 1971; Saward 1994; Burstein 1998; Manza and Cook 2002). Yet scholars also have questioned whether citizens are sufficiently informed and/or reactive enough to play a role governing the state (Plato s Republic; Mill 1861; Lippmann 1925; Schumpeter 1950; Converse 1964; Page and Shapiro 1992; Dahl 1998). This work highlights the importance of the interrelationships between public opinion and policy, both from opinion to policy and also from policy to opinion. It implies that those interested in studying democracy should be concerned with policy representation whether and how policy follows public preferences and public responsiveness whether preferences react to policy itself. There already is a large and growing body of work on the correspondence between public opinion and policy behaviour. 1 And work on thermostatic models of the opinion-policy relationship suggests not just that policymakers respond to the public, but that the public adjusts its preferences over time in reaction to policy change (Wlezien 1995, 1996a; Erikson et al. 2002). This work is important. Narrowly conceived, it suggests that policymakers are attentive to public preferences and that the public is aware of and reactive to policy change, at least in certain domains. More broadly conceived, it offers empirical evidence on the nature and quality of representative democracy. Most empirical work to date focuses only on the US, though there is a growing body of work examining opinion-policy connections elsewhere. 2 Owing largely to data limitations, however, there are relatively few direct comparisons of results across countries. Comparative studies of opinion-policy links are nevertheless fundamental to our understanding of how or if, or how well democracies work. Indeed, differences in representation (and public responsiveness) across countries may be linked to a variety of institutional factors, such as the level of federalism, the relative power of the executive and the legislature, and party competition itself. Highlighting differences in the opinion-policy link and connecting these with institutional differences may therefore offer crucial information on the comparative effectiveness of political institutions. The current paper examines political institutions as mediators of the opinion-policy link. Using a body of data on public opinion and government spending, we extend research on the dynamics of spending opinion and policy in the US to Canada and the UK. Specifically, we explore (1) public responsiveness the degree to which the public responds thermostatically to public expenditures, and (2) policy representation the extent to which budgetary decisions reflect public preferences for spending. Our results provide insight into the comparative dynamics of representation and responsiveness across policy domains, and across countries. We begin, however, with our theoretical model of opinion and policy, and 1 The literature is vast, but see, e.g., Miller and Stokes 1961; Weissberg 1976; McCrone and Kuklinski 1979; Monroe 1979; Bartels 1991; Page and Shapiro 1992; Hartley and Russett 1992; Erikson, Wright, and McIver 1993; Goggin and Wlezien 1993; Jacobs 1993; Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson 1995; Wlezien 1996a; Wood and Hinton-Anderson 1998; Hill and Hurley 1998; Smith 1999; Sharpe 1999; Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002; Soroka 2003; Wlezien, See also Weakliem s 2002 excellent review and assessment of the literature. 2 See, e.g., Brooks 1987, 1990; Petry 1999; Franklin and Wlezien 1997; Eichenberg and Stoll 2003; Soroka 2003; Soroka and Wlezien 2004,

3 an outline of the ways in which opinion-policy congruencies may be enhanced or hindered by political institutions. The Thermostatic Model of Opinion and Policy The representation of public opinion presupposes that the public actually notices and responds to what policymakers do. Without such responsiveness, policymakers would have little incentive to represent what the public wants in policy there would be no real benefit for doing so, and there would be no real cost for not doing so. Moreover, without public responsiveness to policy, expressed public preferences would contain little meaningful information. There not only would be a limited basis for holding politicians accountable; expressed preferences would be of little use even to those politicians motivated to represent the public for other reasons. We need a responsive public. Effective democracy depends on it. A responsive public behaves much like a thermostat (Wlezien 1995). 3 That is, the public adjusts its preferences for more or less policy in response to what policymakers do. When policy increases (decreases), the preference for more policy decreases (increases). For expository purposes, the public can be viewed as a collection of individuals distributed along a dimension of preference for policy activity, say, spending on defence. This characterization is not meant to imply that individuals have specific preferred levels of spending in mind; rather, it is intended to reflect the fact that some people want more than others. The public preference is then represented by the median along this dimension, which implies a certain ideal level of defence spending. Now, if the level of policy differs from the level the public prefers, the public favours a corresponding change in policy, basically, either more or less. If the preferred level is greater than policy itself, the public favours more spending than currently is being undertaken. If policymakers respond, and provide more (but not too much) for defence, then the new policy position would more closely correspond to the preferred level of spending. If the public is indeed responsive to what policymakers do, then the public would not favour as much more activity on defence. It might still favour more, on balance, but not as substantially as in the prior period; if policymakers overshoot the public's preferred level of spending, it would favour less. In effect, following the thermostatic metaphor, a departure from the favoured policy temperature (which itself can change) produces a signal to adjust policy accordingly and, once sufficiently adjusted, the signal stops. This conceptualization of public preferences has deep roots in political science, including Easton's (1965) classic depiction of a political system and Deutsch's (1963) models of control. These expectations can be expressed formally. The public s preference for more policy its relative preference, R represents the difference between the public s preferred level of policy (P * ) and the level it actually gets (P): R t = P * t - P t (1) Thus, as the preferred level of policy or policy itself changes, the relative preference signal changes accordingly. The public is expected to respond currently to actual policy change when put into effect (at t). This is straightforward, at least in theory. It is less straightforward in practice. 3 This discussion closely follows Wlezien (1995: ). 3

4 Most importantly, we typically do not directly observe P *. Survey organizations typically do not ask people how much policy they want. Instead, these organizations ask about relative preferences, whether we are spending too little, whether spending should be increased, or whether we should do more. This, presumably, is how people think about most policies. (Imagine asking people how much health or education spending they want.) The public preference, however defined, also is necessarily relative. In one sense, this is quite convenient, as we can actually measure the thermostatic signal the public sends to policymakers. We can rewrite the model of R t as follows: R t = a + β 1 P t + β 2 W t + e t, (2) where a and e t represent the intercept and the error term, respectively and W designates the instruments for the public s preferred level of policy (P*). Note that levels of relative preferences are expected to be associated with current levels of policy; if the thermostatic model applies, the coefficient (β 1 ) relating the two is expected to be less than 0. Now, if policymakers are responsive to these public preferences, changes in policy ( P) will be associated with lagged (t-1) levels of the public s relative preference (R), as follows: P t = ρ + β 3 R t-1 + β 4 Z t-1 + µ t, (3) where ρ and µ t represent the intercept and the error term, respectively, and Z represents the set of other determinants of policy such as the partisan control of government. The coefficient β 3 captures responsiveness, where the effect of preferences on policy is independent of partisan control and other factors; if the coefficient is greater than 0, policy responds to preferences. 4 Notice that the change in expenditure for fiscal year t is modelled as a function of net support in year t-1. This specification is not meant to imply that policies do not respond to current opinion; rather, it is intended to reflect the reality of budgetary decisionmaking, which largely happens over the course of the previous fiscal year (see Wlezien 1996b; Wlezien and Soroka 2003). Thus, this specification captures responsiveness to opinion when most budgetary decisions actually are made. These expectations are general ones and we do not expect the model to apply in all policy domains in all countries. Indeed, public and policy responsiveness is likely to reflect the political importance (or salience ) of the different domains, if only due to possible electoral consequences. 5 Following Wlezien (2004), we might expect the pattern of representation to be symmetrical to patterns of public responsiveness: where the public notices and responds to policy in a particular domain, policymakers will notice and respond to public preferences themselves; where the public does not respond to policy, policymakers will not represent public preferences. This may help us understand certain patterns of policymaker behaviour. For instance, it might tell us why one government is more responsive than another government to public preferences. It also may tell us why one government is more responsive to preferences for policy in some areas but not others. But it tells us little about the behaviour of the public. Would we expect the public to behave differently in different 4 This does not mean that politicians actually respond to changing public preferences, for it may be that they and the public both respond to something else. All we can say for sure is that the coefficient (β 3 ) captures policy responsiveness in a statistical sense, that is, whether and the extent to which public preferences directly influence policy change, other things being equal. 5 We can explicitly incorporate salience (S) into our model as follows: P t = ρ + β 3 S t-1 R t-1 + β 4 Z t-1 + µ t, where S ranges between 0 and 1. Here the effect of opinion on policy depends on the level of salience. This follows Franklin and Wlezien (1997); also see Jones (1994) and Soroka (2003). 4

5 countries? Under what conditions? And taking these differences into account, might we not expect governments in some countries to pay relatively less attention to public preferences than do governments in other countries? What is the structuring role of institutions? Political Institutions Polities differ in many ways, and some of these differences should have significant implications for the nature and degree of public and policy responsiveness. Of fundamental importance are mass media openness and political competition, for instance. Mass media openness is essential in modern democracies the role of media in democracy has been highlighted by both political theorists (e.g., Dahl 1971) and media analysts (e.g., Arterton et al. 1990). Without an open media, people cannot easily receive information about what government actors do, and are less able to respond to policy change. Likewise, governments have less incentive to respond to public opinion in the absence of some level of political competition; at the very least, the incentive would be less reliable. 6 Of course, elections are no guarantee of competition (Golder 2004), and even where we have a degree of competition in modern democracies the level varies non-trivially. But how much competition do we need? We likely don t need to have perfect competition there is reason to think that a little competition may go a long way. But the absence of competition quite clearly removes a critical incentive for policy responsiveness. Political institutions may also be particularly important. Indeed, the literature on comparative political institutions suggests that institutions will be very powerful mediators of opinionpolicy connections. There are two institutions that seem especially significant: electoral systems, and the division of powers. Electoral Systems Even where we have basic levels of media and political competition, institutional differences may have important implications for public responsiveness and policy representation. Electoral systems are the emphasis of most of the existing relevant literature. Most of this research focuses on differences between majoritarian and proportional visions, using Powell s (2000) language, and mostly on how these differences matter for policy responsiveness. Let us briefly review the literature in the area, focusing on the two leading exponents. 7 Lijphart (1999) provides one of the clearest statements on the subject. In his recent and influential book, he assesses the performance of consensual systems (characterized by proportional representation, multiparty systems, and coalition governments, as well as federalism, strong constitutions, and executive-legislative separation) versus majoritarian systems (characterized by simple plurality election rules, a two-party system, and single-party government, as well as unitary government and an uncodified constitution). Lijphart compares the relationship between consensual versus majoritarian government and number of outcome variables, including, for instance, social welfare policy, foreign aid, women s parliamentary representation, and turnout. Results lead him to conclude that the consensual approach is superior to the majoritarian one. 6 Political competition also may be essential for the flow of information to the public as well. That is, in the course of election campaigns and policy debates, people learn about what politicians actually have done and are doing. Consider the now voluminous literature on negative campaigning in the US beginning with Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995). 7 For a classification of systems around the world, see Golder (2005). 5

6 Powell (2000) provides further support of Lijphart s hypothesis, though he focuses specifically on differences between majoritarian and proportional election rules and their implications for representation. Relying on expert surveys relating to party positions and opinion surveys of the public in different countries, he shows that proportional representation tends to produce greater congruence between the government and the public. Specifically, the general ideological complexion of policy and the ideological bent of the electorate tend to be better matched in proportional systems. According to Powell, this reflects the greater direct participation of constituencies the vision affords. The mechanism is the bargaining required to form a majority. Whereas majoritarian rules lead parties to coalesce in advance of a election, thus producing a clear majority on Election Day, proportional rules disperse power, thus requiring a set of parties to come together after an election to form a government. In reaching agreement, the resulting coalition effectively averages across the component party positions, thereby producing moderation. In majoritarian systems, governments tend to be further off-center. Perhaps parties in these systems do not reliably move to the ideological center but instead tend to position off to the left and right. It also may be that parties do compete for the center but that voters do not consistently select the most centrist party, that is, election outcomes may reflect other things, such as economic growth. Regardless of the exact underpinnings, the main result is clear: Proportional elections produce more representative governments than do majoritarian systems. Powell s results pertain to elections and their immediate consequences. But, what about in the periods between elections? What if public opinion changes after an election? Are coalition governments more responsive to the change in opinion? Or is it that the singleparty governments in majoritarian systems are equally, if not more responsive? During the periods between elections, there is reason to think that governments in majoritarian systems are actually more responsive to opinion change. There are at least two reasons. First, it presumably is easier for a single party to respond to changes than a multiparty coalition: coordination in the latter is more difficult and costly. Second, majoritarian governments may have more of an incentive to respond to opinion change. This generalizes Rogowski and Kayser s (2002) argument relating to the comparatively higher seats-votes elasticities in majoritarian systems, namely, that governments in those systems more responsive to consumer interests than producer interests. Since a shift in electoral sentiment has bigger consequences on Election Day in majoritarian systems, governments there are likely to pay especially close attention to the ebb and flow of opinion. Thus, it may be that both systems work to serve representation, but in different ways, where proportional systems provide better indirect representation via elections and majoritarian systems better direct representation in between elections. Vertical Divisions of Power As electoral systems may matter, so too may government institutions. In particular, we expect that the division of powers both vertical and horizontal may structure the relationships between opinion and policy over time. In short, we argue that: (1) a vertical division of powers, or decentralization, makes it more difficult for the public to gauge and react to government policy change, and thus dampens public responsiveness; and, (2) a horizontal concentration of powers, or parliamentary government, makes politicians less responsive to changes in public opinion. 6

7 Let us first consider the vertical division, or federalism, and its consequences for public responsiveness to policy. We know that thermostatic public responsiveness requires that people acquire accurate information about what policymakers are doing. This clearly depends on the supply of information, as we have discussed. It also depends on the clarity of that information. More precisely, it depends on the extent to which responsibility for policies is clear, and this is in part a function of how government itself is organized. Federalism, the vertical division of powers, increases the number of different governments making policy and thus makes less clear what government is doing (see, e.g., Downs, 1999). Put differently, the government policy signal may be confused or, rather, there may be different signals from multiple sources at least in policy domains for which different governments have responsibility. This clearly can dampen public responsiveness. Federalism can of course come in different forms, varying not just across countries but also across policy domains. In some cases, separate levels of government will have complete control for different domains what is in the American context referred to as dual federalism (textbooks often invoke the image of a layer cake). In this design, different governments have different responsibilities and there are no interactions between layers. Much like the unitary system, there is no mistaking the source of policy in each policy area. It s just that the source differs. We thus might expect a comparatively high level of responsiveness on the part of the public (in politically important domains, at least). This does presume that the availability of information about the behaviour of governments is fairly equal across levels of government, however, and this may not be true for at least two reasons: (1) the behaviour of the national government may receive more attention than lower-level governments; (2) the flow of information about lower-level governments may vary meaningfully geographically, e.g., across counties, states, and municipalities. Even so, responsiveness is more likely in systems characterized by dual federalism than it is in domains where policymaking within domains is divided between governments. Most federal systems involve different governments sharing responsibilities in policy areas, for instance, often referred to as cooperative federalism. (The textbook image is of a marble cake.) There are two ways in which different levels of government can be involved. One involves direct involvement by multiple levels. In this arrangement, there are different sources of policy change and implementation, which can create fairly obvious complications for the public, especially if policy change over time is not parallel across levels of government. It may not be that the public is less informed about the sum of policy across levels of government, though this is a possibility. There is very good reason to think that the public will be less informed about the behaviour of specific levels, however, as this would require keeping what s happening at each level perfectly straight. Where there are overlapping jurisdictions, we expect a dampening of public responsiveness of preferences for policy at any particular level of government. For instance, we might expect that individuals preferences for more policy at the national level are less responsive to changes in national policy. We would expect the same at lower levels of government as well. Things may be even worse where one government transfers money to other governments. Here, multiple governments are involved but the actions of one government are not directly visible, at least in the actual delivery of services. The nature of transfers should affect the clarity with which the public can attribute responsibility. In some cases, the recipient government still may have not much policy discretion. For instance, the recipient government may simply be the conduit for the transfer of public money, as is the case with grants-in-aid in the US. And even where the recipient is not a mere go-between, there may be little discretion, as with categorical grants. In these cases, federalism may make relatively 7

8 little difference to the public, as change in policy at one level largely though nevertheless imperfectly drives changes in policy at another level. Things are potentially quite different with block grants or revenue sharing. These mechanisms allow lower-level governments substantial discretion; indeed, revenue sharing comes with absolutely no strings. This situation is not very common in the US, at least since While the national government may provide a broad direction for policy change at lower levels, what happens at these levels may differ quite a lot from place to place. Largely unconditional block grants remain very common in Canada, however, where provinces have ostensibly exclusive jurisdiction over many policy domains, but quite limited taxing power. The Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST), for instance, was a massive block grant from the federal government to provinces in order to help cover the cost of healthcare, education and welfare, and had very few strings attached. In this situation, it is very often not clear to the public which government is responsible for what policy. Policy in one province may have gone up a lot, but does this mean we want the national government to do less? Or do we think that lower-level governments should do less? Or both? Indeed, the truth might be that we should think that the national government needs to do less and the local government more. Making such an assessment is, however, rather difficult we simply cannot tell which government is principally responsible for a given shift in spending. Figure 1 about here We thus have pretty clear expectations about the effects of federalism on public responsiveness to policy. These are illustrated in Figure 1. First, responsiveness to policy at any particular level of government should be generally lower in federal systems than in unitary systems. Second, in federal systems, responsiveness should be especially low in domains where multiple governments are involved in policy. As the mix of responsibility increases, public preferences for policy at any particular level of government will be correspondingly less meaningful. This may have implications for policy representation itself. As we already have discussed, there is good reason to think that we will have clear policy responsiveness only where we observe clear public responsiveness to policy. Some (Downs, 1999) also have argued that federalism actually increases net representation of broad policy preferences, as multiple levels of government provides greater opportunity. This possibility is perfectly consistent with our conjecture regarding representation at particular levels of government: it may be that the representation of opinion at each level of government is lower but representation across levels of government is higher. Unfortunately, with our measure of broad preferences for government policy, we can t explicitly consider the possibility. Horizontal Divisions of Power Now let us consider the horizontal division of powers (between the executive and legislature) and government responsiveness to public opinion. There are really two main forms of executive-legislative organization: parliamentary and presidential. In the former, which is much more common among advanced industrial democracies, the executive is traditionally chosen from within the parliament and it serves only with the confidence of parliament. 8 That is, the government depends on the support of the parliament to stay in power in effect, the executive and legislative branches are fused. This concentration of powers is the defining characteristic of what is often called responsible government. (When put together with a majoritarian electoral system, we have responsible party government. ) 8 For a focused discussion of the differences and their implications, see Strom (2004). 8

9 In the presidential model, conversely, powers are divided into separate executive and legislative branches, each separately elected and endowed with separate powers. The separate institutions thus share power, where each can check or balance the other, at least with respect to statute. Neither branch can effectively act without the other, except where the legislative support is overwhelming. And even then, implementation is in the hands of the executive. Figure 2 about here This difference in institutional arrangements may matter for government responsiveness to public opinion. In short, there is reason to suppose that parliamentary governments are less reliable in their attendance to public opinion (see Figure 2). Scholars have long noted the dominance of cabinets over parliaments (see, e.g., the classic statements by Bagehot 1867 and Jennings 1959; also see Laver and Shepsle 1996); these scholars portray a world in which cabinet governments exercise substantial discretion. Cox (1987) attributes the role of cabinets it to heightened electoral competition for seats over time. Other research provides a more institutional motivation (e.g., Tsebelis 2002). First, in contrast with most presidential systems, the executive in parliamentary systems typically is the proposer. The government puts its legislation to the commons. Second, the legislature has only a limited check on what the executive does. It has what Lupia and Strom (1995) call a doomsday device : the no confidence vote. This is a very big check, obviously, but it can be very costly for the majority party; undertaking such a vote requires that governing party legislators are willing to face an early election. Indeed, Huber (1996) finds that the threat of a no confidence vote can be used to the cabinet s advantage, and allows it to effectively control the legislative process. Strom (2004) highlights another doomsday device the dissolution power which allows the Prime Minister or cabinet to threaten the parliament with an immediate electoral competition. Ultimately, according to Strom, parliamentary government deals much better with adverse selection than it does moral hazard. Once established, the cabinet is difficult to control on a recurring basis. This has fairly clear implications for government responsiveness. When there are differences between what the cabinet and parliament want, the latter cannot effectively impose its own contrary will. It cannot even easily veto. Perhaps more importantly, the legislature cannot consistently undertake error correction, that is, adjusting the government s position where it may be going too far or not far enough given public preferences. This is of particular relevance given the independence of individual ministers in the policymaking process (Laver and Shepsle, 1996). Some may be more conservative than others, some more liberal. All can make mistakes. The process of amendment and veto is crucial. In these parliamentary systems, however, this can be somewhat compromised, at least by comparison with presidential systems. In the latter, the executive cannot effectively act without the legislature. The legislature proposes, and bills are the result of compromise within and, usually, across assemblies. The executive can veto legislation but, with sufficient support, the legislature can impose its will. Although the separation of powers makes presidential systems much more deliberate in their actions, then, it would appear to make them more reliably responsive to public opinion over time. We still expect representation in parliamentary systems, of course. After all, governments in these systems are more easily held accountable for their actions, as responsibility is far clearer, particularly in a majoritarian context. In between elections, however, there is little to make cabinets accountable except for the prospect of a future electoral competition. Though important, the incentive is imperfect. 9

10 The horizontal division of powers also may be important to public responsiveness. On the one hand, past work suggests that executive-legislation separation confuses responsibility for government action (especially see Franklin 2004). People may thus notice policy change without knowing who is responsible. On the other hand, some scholars argue that horizontal separation actually makes it easier to elicit information about what governments do (Persson, Roland, and Tabellini 1997). According to Persson, et al., separation induces competition among institutional actors. 9 Strom (2004) echoes much the same point, focusing on parliamentary systems and the collusion that copartisanship in those systems encourages. Following this line of argument, we might expect greater public responsiveness in presidential systems, as information about policy change should be more readily available. We cannot be sure that the additional information clarifies more than it confuses, however, as different actors advocate different positions as the process unfolds. We can entertain these possibilities, but cannot be sure about one expectation or the other. In sum, there are various reasons to expect patterns of public and policy responsiveness to differ across countries and policy domains. In particular, we have hypothesized that public responsiveness will reflect the division of government powers, particularly the vertical division. Public responsiveness should be greatest in unitary systems and least in highly federalism countries, especially in those policy domains where multiple governments are involved. We also have hypothesized that government responsiveness will reflect the division of powers, especially the horizontal separation, as well as the proportionalmajoritarian quality of the electoral system. Indeed, government responsiveness should be greatest in presidential systems with proportional representation, an unusual combination. It should be least in majoritarian parliamentary systems, which themselves are not that common. The other two, much more typical, cases majoritarian presidential and proportional parliamentary should lie somewhere in between. It is not clear in what order, however. Given Powell s work, we might expect that the latter better serves representation. In effect, proportionality would powerfully mitigate the autonomy of cabinet governments. 10 In theory, we can explicitly test these hypotheses. The problem is that we have data for but a handful of countries, namely, Canada, the UK, and the US. These countries are not randomly drawn to a large extent, they are most similar. This may work in our favour. Notice first that the countries are majoritarian systems. In effect, the case selection controls for this difference to begin with. This leaves important differences with respect to government institutions, however. First, the countries differ greatly on the federal dimension (Joumard and Kongsrud 2003). The UK is a highly unitary system, among the most unitary modern democracies at least until recent moves toward devolution. The US and Canada meanwhile are highly federalized systems, especially Canada, which, along with Switzerland, may be most in opposition to the UK. Second, the countries differ greatly with respect to separation of powers. The UK and Canada are classic parliamentary systems with unified powers. The US is the classic presidential system with separation of powers. Responsiveness and Representation Combined Thus far we have considered public responsiveness and policy representation independently. The two are intimately connected, however. In particular, policy representation is dependent 9 Persson et al. argue further that this can improve political accountability. 10 There is an alternative view, at least a more complex one. For instance, Rogowski and Kayser (2002) argue that the comparatively higher seats-votes elasticities in majoritarian systems make governments in those systems more responsive to consumer interests than those of producers. 10

11 on a certain degree of public responsiveness; it follows that the institutional factors that tend to dampen public responsiveness (federalism) may also indirectly decrease responsiveness. Figure 3 about here Generally speaking, representation and responsiveness combine to create a kind of system efficiency, where efficiency following Deutsch captures the speed and accuracy with which a political system adapts to a shock and returns to a state of equilibrium. That is, efficiency is a combination of policymakers reactions to preferences and the public s capacity to recognize this policy shift and adjust relative preferences accordingly. Efficiency is conditioned by the political institutions discussed above, of course, as well as issue salience. Figure 3 presents the general structure. Here, policy systems or policy domains within systems are plotted on two horizontal axes, one for the horizontal division of powers (at the back), and the other for the vertical division of powers (on the left). A given system s location on each axis has bearings on our expectations regarding responsiveness and representation: representation will tend to decline as a system becomes more parliamentary, and responsiveness will tend to decline as a system becomes more federal. Note that in this figure efficiency declines more quickly with federalism than with unitary rather than presidential government. This is purposeful, and meant to reflect the possibility that incentives for representation will decline alongside public responsiveness, while in contrast responsiveness need not decline alongside representation. These are only very general expectations, of course, as we have little basis for being specific about how steeply, or how asymmetrically, efficiency declines along either axis. In addition, issue salience will tend to move the entire efficiency plane upwards or downwards. That is, more salient domains will tend to exhibit more responsiveness and representation overall, though divisions of power will still matter in roughly similar ways. The same is true for low salience issues, though in this case the efficiency plane moves downwards. The whole story is not quite this simple, of course, as Figure 3 does not deal with electoral systems. Nevertheless, most of our general expectations for representation and responsiveness across political systems are captured in this figure. Figure 3 (and the hypotheses discussed above) has clear implications for the study of the performance of policymaking institutions. Most importantly, it makes clear that we need to consider both sides of the opinion-policy relationship. Preferences should inform policy change. But policy change, in turn, should inform preferences. Indeed, reactive preferences provide the critical motivation for policy representation. The performance of policymaking institutions, we suggest, can thus be conceived as a function of the extent to which these institutions facilitate both policy representation and public responsiveness. Thinking about the three countries on which our analyses rely, our expectations are most clear for the public side of the equation, where the dimensionality is essentially singular. That is, we expect public responsiveness to policy will vary with federalism and thus will be greatest in the UK, lesser in the US, and lesser still in Canada. 11 Similarly, within countries, domains that are particularly federal (such as US education spending) will show less public responsiveness than domains that are less federal (such as US welfare spending). On the government side, things are slightly more complex, depending on the role federalism plays. If federalism has limited effects, we expect representation of opinion to reflect the separation of powers and be greatest in the US and lesser in Canada and the UK. If federalism also has 11 Effects owing to separation of powers might change things dramatically. If separation decreases information, we would expect differences between countries to increase, especially between the US and UK; if separation increases information, we would expect relatively little difference between the three countries. 11

12 effects, we might expect a different pattern, where the differences between the countries are seriously attenuated. In the extreme, where only federalism matters, we would expect government responsiveness to perfectly parallel our expectations about public responsiveness. Although we cannot fully examine the effects of all possible institutional differences, an analysis of these three countries thus may offer important insights into the structuring roles of institutions. Let us see what the data reveal. Data The dataset used here includes comparable measures of budgetary policy and public preferences for spending in various policy domains over time, in Canada, the UK and US. Our work elsewhere has examined opinion-policy connections across a number of different policy domains, including defense, welfare, health, education, the environment, transportation, and cities. Here, we focus on just a few domains for which data are available all three countries: defense, health, and education. In addition, we look at results for welfare in the US and Canada. Measures of spending preferences rely on a common question, asked relatively consistently in all three countries. The question is as follows: Do you think the government is spending too much, too little or about the right amount on [healthcare]? The question thus asks about general preferences for government spending, not preferences for spending at particular levels of government per se. 12 Respondents are asked about spending in various categories besides healthcare just three others in the UK, but eight more in the US and seven more (consistently) in Canada. The question is also asked with varying frequencies across countries: in Canada, Environics asked these questions between 14 and 16 times (depending on the spending domain) from 1984 to 2002, and some missing years can be filled in using similar data from Pollara; 13 in the UK, Gallup asked the question 19 times in only 13 years and not at all since 1995; 14 in the US, the GSS includes these questions almost every year from 1973 to 1994, and then every other year until Using these data, we can create time series covering from 16 to 23 fiscal years between 1976 and 2004, though note that there are gaps in many of the series, which we address below. The simplest, most reliable way to reflect public preferences using these data is to create percentage difference measures, by subtracting the percentage of people who think we are spending too much from the percentage of people who think we are spending too little in each domain. The measures of net support (R t ) thus capture the degree to which the public wants more or less spending over time indeed, the measures capture both direction and magnitude. Our measures of budgetary policy (P t ) rely on estimates of spending by function in Canada, the UK and US. Finding directly comparable data is not easy unlike in the US, for instance, 12 In Canada, people actually are asked about the federal government, which is of some relevance and presumed benefit, given the theoretical discussion above; that is, it would appear possible to assess the explicitly national-level responsiveness of both the public and government. Ironically, it is difficult to fully disentangle national and provincial spending in many Canadian domains, especially the highly decentralized ones (see Soroka and Wlezien 2004). 13 Environics asked questions about most policy domains from 1984 to Data are missing in 1986, 1992, and 1996; for domains in which Pollara also asked questions, 1996 data are filled in using Pollara results. (For further details and a comparison of the Environics and Pollara series, see Soroka and Wlezien 2004.) 14 Gallup did not ask the question in 1980, 1981, 1984, 1987 and 1994, but we are able to use measures from proximate periods for years 1981 and Data remain missing in the other three years. Note also that when more than one poll exists in a single fiscal year, results are averaged. 12

13 Canadian and UK governments do not provide data on appropriations of budget authority at any level of aggregation. All that is available is data on expenditures (outlays). Although expenditures surely are important, they are not policy per se. That is, elected politicians have only limited control over what is spent, which may reflect things that they cannot anticipate or manage. Using expenditures thus biases analyses against finding opinion representation (see Wlezien 1996a; Wlezien and Soroka 2003). To provide comparability across countries, we rely on expenditures in each of the countries. US outlays are drawn directly from the Historical Tables in the 2003 Budget, and the specific definitions of the functions used are described in Wlezien (2004). Our measures of functional spending in the UK rely on a new database that solves the problem of inconsistent functional definitions that complicates the use of data available in HM Treasury s Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses; details on these data are available in Soroka, Wlezien, and McLean (2006). Functional spending figures in Canada are available from various Statistics Canada CANSIM matrices; details on these data are available in Soroka and Wlezien (2004.). Spending data in Canada present a particular problem: health, education and welfare are in large part funded through large federal-provincial block transfers that are not allocated to any one domain until they reach the provinces (and provinces have considerable discretion). The result is that it is impossible to measure federal spending in each of these individual domains. We accordingly rely on consolidated (federal and provincial) spending for individual domains in Canada. These consolidated data account for expenditures through block transfers after they have been allocated by provinces, and thus can be linked to a single policy domain. We also estimate models for domestic domains together, however, and in this case we can use federal spending independently. To do so, we combine direct federal spending in health, education and welfare, as well as federal block transfers to provinces for spending across these three domains. We still cannot separate out the proportions of these transfers that are spent on each of health, education and welfare; when we look at all three together, however, this doesn t matter. This direct comparison of results using consolidated or federal spending is quite telling, as we shall see. Figure 4 about here The resulting spending and preferences data are shown in Figure 4. The figure indicates that spending on the different functions clusters together, at least in levels. A lot more is spent on some programs than others; not surprisingly, the latter seem to change only very deliberately over time and the former show more variance. Spending in most domains does tend to trend upward over time, documenting a well-known pattern of government growth. Note also that spending on defense tends to move in the opposite direction, at least in the US and UK, implying a guns-butter trade-off. Public preferences for spending exhibit similar structure. Preferences in domestic domains tend to flow together over time in each country. In contrast with what we see for spending, the preference series are more strictly parallel, that is, they show very similar variance. Preferences for defense spending also largely mirror domestic preferences in the UK and US. Thus, spending and public preferences in the different domains tend to move in the same liberal-conservative direction over time in each country. These results all are potentially quite telling for our analysis. Indeed, the patterns imply a certain global movement of opinion that may drive politicians behavior in various policy domains. The movement is not entirely global, however. That is, some of the variance of spending and preferences is domain-specific. This is easy to overlook but of real importance, as our past work has demonstrated. Now, let us examine how preferences and spending relate to each other over 13

14 time. Using these data, we can estimate equations 2 and 3 (above). For the analysis of feedback (equation 2), the dependent variable is the current level of net support for spending. To preserve precious degrees of freedom, we impute values when opinion data is missing using a straight linear interpolation. This actually has relatively little consequence for the general pattern of results; that is, it mostly increases the reliability of estimated parameters. These series are regressed on current corresponding levels of spending (in billions of inflationadjusted 2000 national currency units) and the instruments for the public s preferred level of spending. 15 Regarding these instruments, we know that public preferences for defense spending in the US have closely followed perceived variation in national security over time. Specifically, until 1989 preferences reflected attitudes toward the Soviet Union/Russia as indicated by the likes and dislikes of that country (Wlezien 1995). There is reason to expect a similar pattern to hold in the UK and Canada. The problem is that we do not have comparable measures of likes/dislikes of Russia in those countries. However, if the measure from the US provides a reliable indication of the actual security threat from the Soviet Union during the period, or broad public perceptions of that threat, then it should work equally well in the UK and Canada. We thus use the US measure there. The measure of Net Dislike represents the percentage of Americans who dislike Russia minus the percentage who like the country. The data are drawn primarily from the General Social Survey (GSS) but are supplemented using American Institute for Public Opinion (AIPO) data in 1979 and 1981, when the GSS was not in the field. Changes in net dislike are no longer relevant after 1989, so the series we use here takes the 1989 value and simply projects it forwards net dislike varies until 1989, and is held constant afterwards. Identifying specific instruments for the different domestic domains is much less straightforward, and our attempts to do so were not successful. 16 We do include a linear counter variable, however, to account for any increase in the underlying preferred levels of spending over time, other things being equal (Wlezien 1995). For policy representation (equation 3), we build directly on recent political models of policy change (Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson 1995; Wlezien 1996a, 2004; Smith 1999), which include measures of public preferences and party control of government. Following equation 3, the dependent variables used in the analyses represent the first differences of spending (in constant dollars/pounds) for each of the spending categories. Recall that these changes in spending are expected to be positively related to the levels of net support for spending, which capture the public s relative preferences. Politicians are expected to respond currently. In the budgetary context, this means that change in spending for fiscal year t follows the level of net support in year t-1, when the bulk of spending decisions for fiscal year t are made. 15 It is important to note that Dickey-Fuller tests indicate that the measures of net support the dependent variables are stationary. 16 We know that preferences in these areas do exhibit common movement, and previous research indicates that it follows variation in economic security over time. It is not clear exactly what effect the economy has, as the findings of different studies differ quite a lot: economic security is positively related to spending opinion in some studies (Durr 1992) and negatively in others (Erikson, et al. 2002). The studies do rely on different measures business expectations and unemployment rates, respectively. Still other research on public opinion relies on the sum of unemployment and inflation rates (Franklin and Wlezien 1997). We have used this misery index in past work but for most of the analyses here economic conditions have no effect. To preserve degrees of freedom, we do not include these measures in the analyses here, and doing so makes no real difference. Results including economic variables are available upon request. 14

15 The party control variable is fairly standard and takes the value 0 under Democrat/ Labour/ Liberal governments and 1 under Republican/ Conservative governments. The measure of party control thus taps the levels of partisan control, which might appear to be inconsistent with the (differenced) dependent variables. Given that budgetary policy feeds back in thermostatic fashion on public preferences, however, the specification actually is theoretically implied (Wlezien 1996a; 2004). It also is supported by separate diagnostic analyses. Results Complete results are provided in the Appendix. 17 Our focus here is on the effect of spending on preferences (public responsiveness), and the effect of preferences on spending (policy representation). The relevant coefficients both in their raw and standardized form are gathered together in Table 1. Note first that the thermostatic model works remarkably well. In every case, the coefficient for spending is negative, implying a thermostatic responsiveness to policy change on behalf of the public. Also in every case, the coefficient for preferences is positive, suggesting that policy reacts to the preferences of citizens. Table 1 about here The magnitude and significance of both public responsiveness and representation clearly vary across domains, and do so in predictable ways. That said, comparing the coefficients across countries and domains is somewhat difficult. In each case, the preferences coefficient indicates the change in spending in 2000 national current units (NCUs) that is a consequence of a one-unit shift in net preferences for spending; similarly, the spending coefficient indicates the change in preferences given a one billion NCU shift in spending. The amount spent in each domain will affect the magnitude of the coefficients, however. Defense is a good example. The US spends much more on defense than either the UK or Canada. As a consequence, the volume of spending varies by a greater amount, and the feedback coefficient appears to be comparatively small. Put simply, a one billion dollar shift in defense spending for the US signifies a much smaller overall policy change than does a similar shift in UK or Canadian defense expenditures. Similarly, the preferences coefficient for the US in this domain is quite large in comparison to the other countries, since the spending change resulting from a one-unit shift in preferences should be relatively large (given the volume of spending in this domain). Indeed, the magnitude of coefficients will vary not just due to levels of spending (and different currencies), but also differences in the variances of each spending and preference series. What we can say about the Table 1 results is that, based on statistical significance, feedback across all domains is most robust in the UK and representation most evident in the US. The pattern is only very faint, however. To draw it out more clearly, and to facilitate more intelligible comparisons of coefficients across both domains and countries, we transform these coefficients in two different ways, in Tables 2 and 3. Table 2 contains results for feedback. The first column shows how the estimated effects differ across domains and countries when we take into account the variances of spending in the different domains. Specifically, it lists the effect on preferences of a one-standard deviation shift in spending. The effects are all predictably much larger than the coefficients in Table 1 but the pattern differs, particularly across countries. We can see that the estimates for the UK still are clearly larger than those for the US and Canada in each domain. The differences are 17 While we move rather quickly past these estimations here, they are dealt with in much more detail elsewhere. See Soroka and Wlezien 2004,

16 less pronounced, however. The estimates in the US and Canada also are more similar, at least on average. The US public is much more responsive to a standardized shift in defense spending; the Canada public is much more responsive to a comparable shift in health spending. These differences are as we would expect given the evident salience of issue domains in the two countries (Soroka and Wlezien 2004). When we look at the domestic domains combined, feedback appears to be larger in Canada than in the US 9.3 to 6.5. This is true when focusing on consolidated spending in Canada, at least; when focusing only on federal spending, in the last row of Table 2, the estimated effect drops below that of the US. This shift is telling. Consolidated spending reflecting policymaking by all levels of government is likely a relatively clear signal, as opposed to purely federal spending, which captures just one component of the policy citizens will observe. Feedback is consequently reduced when the analysis relies on federal spending alone, in line with our expectations about the effects of federalism on public responsiveness. Table 2 about here By accounting for the quite different variances in spending (see the third column of Table 2), results in column one provide more understandable information about differences in feedback across countries. They also hint at differences across domains. In the UK, for instance, the public seems to be most responsive to spending on defense and a little less so on health and education. In the US, however, the public seems more responsive to spending on welfare than defense. In Canada, responsiveness is greatest on health and then welfare and then education and defense. Most importantly, the results demonstrate clear differences across countries, and ones that perfectly fit our expectations: The public is much more responsive to policy change where government control is largely concentrated, as in the UK, and significantly less so where it is decentralized, as in the US and Canada. The same is true within countries. There is remarkably low feedback in the US for education, for instance, the domain that is by far the most federal. 18 The second column of Table 2 offers a different transformation and a slightly different pattern across domains. It shows the shift in net support for spending in each domain that results from a 1% change in mean spending. This transformation offers more information about differences across domains, as the mean level of spending across domains differs substantially, especially in the US and Canada. In the US, the estimated response to defense and welfare spending is about equal, though still much greater than on health and education. In Canada, the estimate now is greatest for welfare and then health, education and defense. The patterns across domains are more in fitting with the literature and our own expectations. Table 3 displays comparable results for representation. The first column shows the effects of a standard deviation change in preferences on spending. The most striking result here is that in each domain the effect is much larger for the US, perfectly in fitting with our conjecture. The differences are most pronounced in the defense domain, where the US government is estimated to be 14 times as responsive as the British government and fully 50+ times as responsive as the Canadian government. This borders on the ridiculous. Indeed, it appears that the differences at least partly reflect differences in the size of the programs the larger the program the greater the estimated responsiveness. We accordingly adjust for program size in the second column, which shows the effect on spending of a one-point shift in preferences, expressed as a percent of the mean level of spending in each domain. Here, the variation in effects is sharply reduced across all domains. 18 According to the US Census of Governments ( editions), federal spending on education is just 11% of total education spending. 16

17 For defense, the mean-adjusted effects, in percents, are a much more modest and reasonable.24,.17, and.09 in the US, the UK, and Canada, respectively. The pattern is exactly what we expect given differences in government institutions between the US on the one hand and the UK and Canada on the other and salience between the US and UK on the one hand the Canada on the other. Representation is greatest in our one presidential system where the issue is highly salient, i.e., there is a high level of feedback, and is weakest in the parliamentary system where the issue is of relatively low salience. In the domestic domains, government responsiveness in the US is estimated to be about three times that in the UK and almost four times that in Canada. This also is exactly what we expect. Table 3 about here Although they distort differences across countries, the standardized estimates in the first column of Table 3 do appear to tap real differences across domains within countries. (This is as we should expect given that the variance of preferences mostly differs across countries.) In the US, the estimates indicate a comparatively high level of defense opinion representation and then a sizable drop on health and welfare and then another on education. In the UK, estimated responsiveness to defense opinion also is very high but there is only a slight drop in responsiveness on health and education. In Canada, responsiveness is most pronounced for health, and then welfare and then education and lastly defense. These patterns pretty neatly, if imperfectly, match what we would expect given differences in the level of federalism and issue salience. That is, there is considerable symmetery in the structure of policy feedback and opinion representation within countries. Conclusions We have suggested that a critical indication of the performance of policymaking institutions is the connection between public preferences and public policy specifically, the magnitude of both public responsiveness (feedback) and policy representation. We have further suggested that feedback and representation will be mediated by institutional design. Federalism, by weakening the policy signal the public receives, will tend to dampen feedback. Parliamentary government, by both empowering and isolating a governing cabinet, will tend to decrease policy representation. These suggestions are powerfully evidenced in the preceding tables. The UK our one unitary system exhibits the greatest degree of feedback, while the US our one presidential system exhibits the greatest degree of policy representation. These differences in feedback and representation are pervasive and robust across policy domains. They imply real differences in democratic performance across countries: while the UK benefits from being a unitary system and the US from being a presidential one, Canada benefits from neither. At the same time, there are important differences across domains within countries. Institutions actually may help us understand some of these differences, especially the level of policy decentralization in the US and Canada. The salience of issues also may help explain the differences. Whether and the extent to which the public considers issues to be important appears to matter. This is hardly surprising. The results are striking, we believe, and telling about how and how well policymaking institutions work. Of course, we still face the classic problem of comparative politics research: only three cases and many possible independent variables. This is especially true about the effects of presidential-parliamentary government. For the effects of federalism, after all, we can also observe consequences of variation across policy domains. It may be telling that public responsiveness in Canada is higher for welfare than for either health or 17

18 education, since welfare is by far the most centralized of these domains. 19 Likewise, the relatively low public responsiveness to education spending in the US may reflect its high level of decentralization. 20 In the UK, and looking forward, we might expect decreasing responsiveness with increasing devolution. 21 This all requires additional research. More generally, though perhaps most importantly, we have found evidence that the thermostatic model works in each of these three countries. We observe that the public adjusts its relative preferences for spending in response to spending itself there is negative feedback. We also observe that spending itself follows changes in preferences over time there is representation. Albeit to different degrees across countries and policy domains, democracy works. 19 Federal spending on welfare makes up about 82% of consolidated spending over the period investigated here. Direct federal spending makes up about 10% of consolidated health or education spending, though there are of course block grants in these domains as well. Even so, both health and education are characterized by a complicated, and relatively balanced, mix of federal and provincial spending. 20 Based on data from the US Census of Governments (for 1987, 1992, 1997, and 2002), federal spending on education made up just 11% of combined federal, state and local spending in this domain. In contrast, federal spending makes up 36% of welfare spending, and 50% of health spending. 21 Though we cannot assess this for the UK, as Gallup sadly stopped asking the relevant questions in

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21 Figure 1. Policy Representation and the Horizontal Division of Powers Figure 2. Public Responsiveness and the Vertical Division of Powers 21

22 Figure 3. Feedback and Representation Combined: System Efficiency 22