{"id":52,"date":"2011-10-31T17:10:45","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T17:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=52"},"modified":"2011-10-31T17:10:45","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T17:10:45","slug":"governing-by-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=52","title":{"rendered":"Governing by Polls"},"content":{"rendered":"

The study of policy responsiveness to public opinion is blossoming and propagating. Work published over the last two years includes\u00a0the 2010 book<\/a>\u00a0by Stuart Soroka and Chris Wlezien (Canada, US and the UK),\u00a0this<\/a> paper by Sattler, Brandt, and Freeeman on the UK, \u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0paper on Denmark, my own\u00a0article<\/a> on the EU, Roberts and Kim’s work<\/a>\u00a0on post-Communist Europe, etc.\u00a0\u00a0The latest edition to the literature is this article<\/a> by Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips from Columbia University\u00a0(forthcoming in AJPS).<\/p>\n

“The Democratic Deficit in the States”\u00a0takes a cross-sectional rather than a dynamic (time series)\u00a0perspective and analyzes both responsiveness\u00a0 (correlation)\u00a0 and congruence between policy outcomes and public opinion in the\u00a0US states for\u00a0eight policies. In short, there is a high\u00a0degree of responsiveness but far from perfect congruence between majority opinion and policy. More salient policies\u00a0fair better, and having\u00a0powerful interest\u00a0groups on your side helps. Altogether, this is an interesting and important study that adds yet another piece\u00a0to our understanding of policy responsiveness.<\/p>\n

What starts to worry me, however, is\u00a0that the normative implications of the policy responsiveness literature are too often taken for granted.\u00a0Lax and Phillips seem to equate the lack of correspondence between public opinion and policy\u00a0to democratic deficit(similarly, Sattler, Brandt and Freeman speak of ‘democratic accountability’).<\/em> But there is quite a gap between the fact the a policy contradicts the majority of public opinion and the pronouncement of democratic failure. And we need to start\u00a0unpacking the normative implications of the (lack of)\u00a0policy responsiveness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, at a very general level no political system can be democratic unless there is dynamic responsiveness and broad correspondence between the wishes of the public and what government does. But can we equate<\/strong> congruence of policy with public opinion\u00a0with democracy? I don’t think so. Precise responsiveness and congruence are neither necessary nor sufficient for democratic policy making. Why?<\/p>\n

First and foremost, public opinion as such does not exist. One doesn’t need to embrace a radical post-modern position to admit that the numbers we love to crunch in studies of policy responsiveness are, at best, imperfect (snapshot) estimates of a fluid social construct. It is not only that estimates of aggregate public opinion are subject to the usual measurement problems. It has been shown times and again that the answers we get from\u00a0public surveys are sensitive to the precise wording, form, and \u00a0context of the questions (see George Bishop’s ‘The Illusion of Public Opinion’ for an overview). The questions themselves are often vague and imprecise.\u00a0Polls will elicit responses even when the people have no meaningful opinion\u00a0towards the\u00a0issue (opinions will be regularly given even on fictitious issues). The availability bias is\u00a0often a problem, especially in\u00a0surveys of\u00a0the ‘most important problem’ (open vs. close forms of the question).<\/p>\n

A second problem is\u00a0that public opinion as portrayed by mass surveys need not be the same as the opinion of a group of people after they\u00a0(1) have been given relevant information about the issue, (2) have been allowed ample time to think about it, and (3) have had the opportunity to deliberate about it (on deliberative polls which come with their own set of problems see James Fishkin)<\/em>. People know astoundingly little about current policies even when they are personally affected by\u00a0them (here<\/a>). Do we expect congruence and responsiveness between policy and public opinion as given over the telephone after\u00a0a modicum of\u00a0brain activity<\/em>, or policy and public opinion as it would have been if people made informed\u00a0decisions with the\u00a0common good in mind? <\/em><\/p>\n

The third problem is that public opinion is expressed on various issues presented in isolation. I can very well support an increase in spending on defense,\u00a0education, and\u00a0health, and a decrease in the overall state budget at the very same time. \u00a0My opinion and preferences need not be consistent but policies need to be.\u00a0The problem is compounded by the possibility of preference cycles in aggregate public opinion. Even if individual opinions are rational and well-behaved, preference cycles\u00a0in aggregate public opinion cannot be ruled out.<\/p>\n

There is\u00a0some unintended irony in Stimson et al. designating the aggregate of attitudes and opinions\u00a0they construct the ‘policy mood’ of the public. Normatively speaking, do we really expect policy to respond to\u00a0the mood<\/strong> of the public with all the irrationality, instability and caprice that a mood implies? All in all, the lack of perfect temporal and spatial correspondence between public opinion and policy cannot be interpreted directly as a sign of democratic deficit and failure. Political institutions translating mass preferences into policy exist for a reason (well, a number of reasons, including preference aggregation, deliberation, and inducing stability).<\/p>\n

The other side of the same coin is that responsiveness is not sufficient for democracy. The fact that a government follows closely majority opinion as expressed in the polls and adjusts policy accordingly cannot be a substitute for\u00a0a democratic policy making process. This is especially clear in my own analysis of the EU: although I find that aggregate legislative production closely follows the ebbs and flows in public support for the EU\u00a0during the 1970s, 1980s, and early\u00a01990s\u00a0this cannot dispel our misgivings about the democratic deficit of the EU during this period – the polls are not a substitute for elections, representation, and accountability.<\/p>\n

The lack of sufficient reflection on the democratic implications of the (lack of ) policy responsiveness is especially worrying in view of the tendency (identified on the basis of my subjective reading of the political process in several European states)\u00a0of\u00a0more\u00a0and more\u00a0reference to and reliance\u00a0on ‘instant’ polls\u00a0in making policy. The increased availability and speed of delivery of ‘representative’ public opinion polls lures politicians into\u00a0dancing to the tune of public opinion on\u00a0every occasion. Sensible policies are abandoned if the poll numbers are not right (e.g. second hand smoking restrictions, see here<\/a>), and\u00a0retrogressive\u00a0policies are enacted if the percentage\u00a0of public\u00a0support is high\u00a0enough. But government by polls is only one step\u00a0removed from the government by mobs<\/strong>. Politicians should<\/em> sometimes have different policy opinions than the public and they should<\/em> have the courage to pursue these opinions in the face of (temporary and latent) opposition by the citizens. Meanwhile,\u00a0social science\u00a0has the important task to uncover when<\/em> and how<\/em> policy responsivness and congruence works.\u00a0But I see no need to inflate and oversell the normative implications of the research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The study of policy responsiveness to public opinion is blossoming and propagating. Work published over the last two years includes\u00a0the 2010 book\u00a0by Stuart Soroka and Chris Wlezien (Canada, US and the UK),\u00a0this paper by Sattler, Brandt, and Freeeman on the UK, \u00a0this\u00a0paper on Denmark, my own\u00a0article on the EU, Roberts and Kim’s work\u00a0on post-Communist Europe, etc.\u00a0\u00a0The latest edition to the literature is this article by Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips from Columbia University\u00a0(forthcoming in AJPS). “The Democratic Deficit in the States”\u00a0takes a cross-sectional rather than a dynamic (time series)\u00a0perspective and analyzes both responsiveness\u00a0 (correlation)\u00a0 and congruence between policy outcomes and public opinion in the\u00a0US states for\u00a0eight policies. In short, there is a high\u00a0degree of responsiveness but far from perfect congruence between majority opinion and policy. More salient policies\u00a0fair better, and having\u00a0powerful interest\u00a0groups on your side helps. Altogether, this is an interesting and important study that adds yet another piece\u00a0to our understanding of policy responsiveness. What starts to worry me, however, is\u00a0that the normative implications of the policy responsiveness literature are too often taken for granted.\u00a0Lax and Phillips seem to equate the lack of correspondence between public opinion and policy\u00a0to democratic deficit(similarly, Sattler, Brandt and Freeman speak of ‘democratic accountability’). But there is quite a gap between the fact the a policy contradicts the majority of public opinion and the pronouncement of democratic failure. And we need to start\u00a0unpacking the normative implications of the (lack of)\u00a0policy responsiveness.\u00a0 Of course, at a very general level no political system can be democratic unless…<\/p>\n

Continue readingGoverning by Polls<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[37,38],"tags":[173,175,195,483,487,490,530,531,560,674],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-Q","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":449,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=449","url_meta":{"origin":52,"position":0},"title":"Diffusion of smoking bans in Europe","date":"April 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"My paper on the diffusion of smoking bans in Europe has been accepted in Public Administration. It probably won't be published until next year\u00a0so here is a link to the pre-print and a graph of\u00a0two of the important results of the paper: the probability of\u00a0enactment of a more comprehensive (full)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Policy implementation"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/smoking-bans.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":74,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=74","url_meta":{"origin":52,"position":1},"title":"The decline of the death penalty","date":"October 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I just finished reading\u00a0'The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence' (link, link to book's website)\u00a0by Frank Baumgartner, Suzana De Boef and Amber Boydstun. It is a fine study of the rise of the 'innocence' frame and the decline of the use of capital punishment in the\u00a0US\u00a0(I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Death penalty policy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":282,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=282","url_meta":{"origin":52,"position":2},"title":"Writing with the rear-view mirror","date":"February 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Social science research is supposed to work like this: 1) You want to explain a certain case or a class of phenomena; 2) You develop a theory and derive a set of hypotheses; 3) You test the hypotheses with data; 4) You conclude about the plausibility of\u00a0the theory; 5) You\u00a0write\u00a0a\u00a0paper\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academic publishing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":689,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=689","url_meta":{"origin":52,"position":3},"title":"Bureaucrats as Policy-makers","date":"February 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone loves bitching about bureaucrats but few know what it is exactly that they do. Ed Page's new book 'Policies without Politicians' provides plenty of insights. As I mention at the end of this book review, everyone who theorizes or\u00a0criticizes bureaucrats should read the book as a reality check. A\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bureaucracy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":810,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=810","url_meta":{"origin":52,"position":4},"title":"Visualizing asylum statistics","date":"May 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Note: of potential interest to R users for the dynamic Google chart generated via googleVis in R and discussed towards the end of the post. Here you can go directly to the graph. An emergency refugee center, opened in September 2013 in an abandoned school in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo by\u00a0Alessandro\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Data visualization"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/dynamic-asylum-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1020,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=1020","url_meta":{"origin":52,"position":5},"title":"Immigration and voting for the radical right in Andalusia","date":"December 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote a short text for the European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) blog on the link between immigration presence and voting for Vox, a relatively young radical right party, in the Spanish region of Andalusia.\u00a0 Full text is here, see also this post from 2015 about a similar link with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration and asylum policy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/and_vox2_europp.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}