The Sustainability of Democracy: The Impact of Electoral Incentives on the Input and Output Legitimacy of Democracies

Abstract

International and domestic developments—both economic and ideational—create challenges for contemporary democracies, such as adapting their welfare states, recalibrating their agricultural policies, and reacting to the phenomenon of growing numbers of immigrants. These challenges are not just technical but political. For changes in policies generally mean redirecting public benefits away from current recipients to emerging challengers. Policy recalibration thus poses a distinct problem for democracy, because recalibration entails a reallocation of resources and recognition from established interests and influential voters to newly mobilizing voters and interests. When successful, policy recalibration demonstrates the responsiveness of democracies to new issues, new citizens, and changes in the world. At the same time, policy recalibration indicates governmental effectiveness in addressing these challenges. For, without effective executive pressure, political agreement on the reallocation of the costs and benefits of public policies rarely occurs. Consequently, one can think of policy recalibration as the place where input and output legitimacy meet. Governments respond to citizen demands and preferences, but also guide and mediate in the adjudication of these interests and preferences. Indeed, policy recalibration is a concrete function of government without which democratic polities cannot renew their relevance for citizens and residents. Consequently, the politics of policy recalibration is critical to the sustainability and renewal of democracy. In this essay, our central question is whether some institutions of political representation are more favorable for policy recalibration than others and how their interactions with institutions of interest intermediation intervene in the distribution of costs and benefits of calibration.