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Democratic Accountability: Why Choice in Politics Is Both Possible and Necessary by Leif Lewin. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2007. 264 pp. $45.00. In this stimulating analysis, Leif Lewin wrestles [...]

Many economic and social conditions shape public welfare spending. We are able to show, however, that after taking account of these conditions, the expressed left-right preferences of the median voters significantly affect comparative welfare spending. These new findings support the representational claims of liberal democracy and the theoretical expectations of the literature on ideological congruence. However, we also show that insofar as the preferences of citizens and the promises of governing parties (which are highly correlated,) can be disentangled, it is the former that affect the long-term redistributive welfare spending equilibrium, while the latter have small, but significant short-term effects. Surprisingly, despite greater representational correspondence between positions of voters and governments under PR than SMD, the impact of the median voter preferences is quite similar under the two systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of party system features and election rules on ideological representation can be seen in parliamentary elections in Western democracies over a fifty-year period. "Distortion" is short-term representation failure—the distance between the median voter and the legislature or government immediately after the election. Electoral choice and left-right positions of parties (from the manifesto data) can be used to estimate median voter positions. The number of parties, party polarization, and the election rules all independently affect ideological distances. But party system polarization seems to be the predominate factor shaping distortion of governments' relationship with the median voter. Examining the effects of party systems under different election rules helps clarify' the causal connections between legislative and government levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a three-wave, six-country comparative panel study experiment with 1,197 participants, this article shows how in the long term, political institutions and the media can affect the European identity of citizens. It shows not only that exposure to good or bad news on Europe and to symbols of the European Union has an effect on European identity but also that news works as a powerful time bomb. It suggests that whereas increasingly cynical European citizens first resist perceived attempts of political manipulation, the effect of news ultimately kicks in and so influences citizens' European identity with remarkable efficiency in the long term. The 2.5-year study demonstrates this time bomb effect of news, as well as an immediate but growing effect of political symbols on citizens' identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sophisticated research tradition has explored theoretically and empirically the consequences of election laws for vote-seat disproportionality and, more recently, for the distance between citizen and legislative left-right medians. In contemporary parliamentary systems, policy making tends to be dominated by governments, not legislatures. This article extends election law theory to its expected effects on the left-right representativeness of governing parties and examines whether these are realized after eighty-two elections in fifteen mature parliamentary systems. The analysis shows how the legislative median party, the legislative plurality party and pre-election coalition agreements between parties shape these connections between citizens, legislatures and governments. The article also develops more nuanced measures of party influence on policy making and re-examines the governmental findings using these. Governments and policy-making configurations emerging from bargaining after PR elections are in net significantly closer to their citizens than those created by SMD elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses how to measure the impact of responsiveness on the quality of democracy. Different stages of democratic responsiveness; Types of subversions that threaten the structuring of citizens' electoral choices in working democracies; Other dimensions of democratic quality that facilitate democratic responsiveness.

Two large research programs have analyzed election-based connections between citizens and policy makers in different democracies. Studies of vote-seat representation in the tradition of Rae (1967) begin with citizens' party votes and have made substantial progress in elucidating the impact of election laws, geographic vote distributions, and the number of parties and their interactions on the proportionality of party representation. Studies of substantive representation in the tradition of Miller & Stokes (1963) begin with citizen issue preferences and link these to the positions of their representatives. Most studies outside the United States, confronting multimember districts and the cohesion of party representatives, have focused on voter-party dyads rather than geographic constituencies, and confirmed the importance of issues linked to a common electoral discourse and the greater structure of legislator issue positions. Recently, a number of explicitly comparative analyses have begun to analyze collective correspondence and confront other limitations of the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores two different visions of the democratic processes that can create congruence between citizen preferences and public policies. `Majority Control vision'; `Proportionate Influence vision': More explicit theoretical form to the visions; Link of visions to specific types of modern democracies; Test of the success of each vision.

Empirical theories of electoral and legislative politics can be used to build propositions about the consequences of constitutional designs for citizen electoral control. This article reports preliminary tests of such propositions. Constitutional arrangements in 16 democracies are compared to the degree of clarity of responsibility, opportunity for party choice, decisiveness of elections and effective representation in policy-making, before and after elections. Previous work had suggested that different models of citizen control require different combinations of these characteristics. The preliminary analysis shows constitutional designs that emphasized majoritarian election laws and government dominance in the legislature generally succeeded in creating conditions for the Government Accountability and, to a lesser degree, Government Mandate models of citizen control, but did poorly in creating conditions for the Representative Delegate model. The consensual constitutional designs were generally successful only in creating conditions for the Representative Delegate model. However, much additional work remains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Converse proposed a model drawing on an individual's experience with the vote and socialization by the father to explain the strength of political partisanship. This experience-based model, despite varied criticisms, has gained wide acceptance. By focusing on cases in which political experience and age are not collinear, this article finds that the Converse model fails to account for the strength of partisanship found among new electorates, thereby raising doubts about the model in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the report on the marketing performance of the periodical, American Political Science Review. Cumulative statistical record; Continuity and fluctuation in the yearly record from 1985 to 1991; Changes made in its `Book Review' section; Challenges offered by the periodical to political scientists.

Presents the report of the managing editor of the `American Political Science Review,' 1993-94. Advice on rejected manuscripts; manuscripts that seem likely candidates for publication; Flow of new manuscripts; Acceptance of manuscripts; Time to process manuscripts.

Reports on increase in number of manuscript submissions received by the journal `American Political Science Review' for 1992-93. Table showing the distribution across academic fields in manuscripts accepted for publication; Procedure and performance of processing of the manuscripts; Improvements in manuscript processing time; Transition in format and press; Supervision of book reviews.

Presents the transitions undergone by the `American Political Science Review' during 1992. Managing editorship to editorial team at the University of Rochester; Manuscript acceptance and processing; Change to a larger format; New book review editor.