IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tiu/tiutis/22d4b6f6-e7f6-4407-8b91-832fea6e044f.html

When do Representative and Direct Democracies Lead to Similar Policy Choices?

Author

Listed:
  • Cukierman, A.

    (Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management)

  • Spiegel, Y.

    (Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management)

Abstract

The paradigm of a direct democracy in which individuals vote direclty on the issues is widely used in the recent political economy literature that explicitly models the interaction between economic and political behavior. Yet, in most existing democracies policy decisions are delegated to elected officials. This begs the question of whether direct democracy models are useful for understanding actual policy choices. This question is also of independent interest since until the eighteenth century, the possibility that legislatures might consist of elected representatives remained mainly outside the theory and practice of democratic government. To answer this question we posit a model in which elected officials are better informed than the public about exogenous circumstances, but at the same time, are also influenced by particular constituencies whose desires policies generally differ from those of the decisive voter in the population.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Cukierman, A. & Spiegel, Y., 1998. "When do Representative and Direct Democracies Lead to Similar Policy Choices?," Other publications TiSEM 22d4b6f6-e7f6-4407-8b91-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:tiu:tiutis:22d4b6f6-e7f6-4407-8b91-832fea6e044f
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repository.tilburguniversity.edu/bitstreams/6e2575a3-ccad-46f0-b0de-7da2f2bae62e/download
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roberto Perotti, 1993. "Political Equilibrium, Income Distribution, and Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(4), pages 755-776.
    2. Aizenman, Joshua & Marion, Nancy P, 1993. "Policy Uncertainty, Persistence and Growth," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(2), pages 145-163, June.
    3. Laver, Michael & Shepsle, Kenneth A., 1990. "Government Coalitions and Intraparty Politics," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(4), pages 489-507, October.
    4. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    5. Mayer, Wolfgang, 1984. "Endogenous Tariff Formation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(5), pages 970-985, December.
    6. Tabellini, Guido & Alesina, Alberto, 1990. "Voting on the Budget Deficit," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 37-49, March.
    7. Kenneth Shepsle & Barry Weingast, 1981. "Structure-induced equilibrium and legislative choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 503-519, January.
    8. Tabellini, Guido, 1991. "The Politics of Intergenerational Redistribution," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 335-357, April.
    9. Alesina, Alberto & Özler, Sule & Roubini, Nouriel & Swagel, Phillip, 1996. "Political Instability and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 189-211, June.
    10. Cukierman, Alex & Meltzer, Allan H, 1989. "A Political Theory of Government Debt and Deficits in a Neo-Ricardian Framework," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 713-732, September.
    11. Meltzer, Allan H & Richard, Scott F, 1981. "A Rational Theory of the Size of Government," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 914-927, October.
    12. Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 1997. "An Economic Model of Representative Democracy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 85-114.
    13. Lupia, Arthur, 1992. "Busy Voters, Agenda Control, and the Power of Information," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(2), pages 390-403, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Otto H. Swank & Bauke Visser, 2002. "Delegation or Voting," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 02-005/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    2. Tangeras, T.P., 1998. "On the Role of Public Opinion Polls in Political Competition," Papers 655, Stockholm - International Economic Studies.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alex Cukierman & Yossi Spiegel, 2003. "When is the median voter paradigm a reasonable guide for policy choices in a representative democracy?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 247-284, November.
    2. Etro, Federico, 2015. "Research in economics and political economy," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 261-264.
    3. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482, Elsevier.
    4. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    5. Robi Ragan, 2013. "Institutional sources of policy bias: A computational investigation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(4), pages 467-491, October.
    6. Bellettini, Giorgio, 1998. "Aggregate uncertainty, political instability and income redistribution," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 19-33, February.
    7. César Martinelli & John Duggan, 2014. "The Political Economy of Dynamic Elections: A Survey and Some New Results," Working Papers 1403, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM.
    8. Andersen, Torben M., 2019. "Intergenerational conflict and public sector size and structure: A rationale for debt limits?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 70-88.
    9. G. Bellettini, 1995. "Aggregate uncertainty, political instability and redistribution," Working Papers 213, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    10. Feld, Lars P & Kirchgassner, Gebhard, 2001. "Does Direct Democracy Reduce Public Debt? Evidence from Swiss Municipalities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 109(3-4), pages 347-370, December.
    11. Jo Thori Lind & Dominic Rohner, 2017. "Knowledge is Power: A Theory of Information, Income and Welfare Spending," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(336), pages 611-646, October.
    12. James A Kahn & Jong-Soo Lim, 2001. "Finite Horizons, Political Economy, and Growth," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 4(1), pages 1-25, January.
    13. Sabet, Navid, 2020. "Legal Status and Political Representation: The 1986 IRCA and Hispanic Public Officials," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224655, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Benoît Le Maux, 2009. "Governmental behavior in representative democracy: a synthesis of the theoretical literature," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 447-465, December.
    15. Eckhard Janeba, 2001. "Global Corporations and Local Politics: A Theory of Voter Backlash," NBER Working Papers 8254, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Ryo Arawatari & Tetsuo Ono, 2017. "Inequality and public debt: A positive analysis," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 1155-1173, November.
    17. Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik, 1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 465-490.
    18. Roger Congleton, 2014. "The contractarian constitutional political economy of James Buchanan," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 39-67, March.
    19. Panizza, Ugo & Fatás, Antonio & Ghosh, Atish R. & ,, 2019. "The Motives to Borrow," CEPR Discussion Papers 13735, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    20. Torsten Persson & Gerard Roland & Guido Tabellini, 2000. "Comparative Politics and Public Finance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(6), pages 1121-1161, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tiu:tiutis:22d4b6f6-e7f6-4407-8b91-832fea6e044f. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Richard Broekman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/about/schools/economics-and-management/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.