The forthcoming article “Bicameralism and Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion” by Lawrence Ezrow, Michele Fenzl, and Timothy Hellwig is summarized by the authors below.

In The Federalist Papers (No. 62), James Madison asserted that introducing a second legislative chamber was an effective tool to diffuse power and prevent the tyranny of the majority.  Our study, however, suggests that the presence of a strong second chamber reduces a key source of government legitimacy: policy responsiveness to public opinion.  

We show that the organization of the legislature, into one or two chambers, affects whether governments deliver policy that reflects the changing preferences of the public. This question has gained prominence in recent political debates in Europe. For example, in 2014, Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi tried to pass a constitutional reform that would have weakened the Senate. The rationale that was put forward for weakening the upper house and thus the “perfect” bicameralism of the Italian Parliament was precisely to grant the government more leeway to respond to socio-economic challenges and public demands.  

Our findings support this reasoning. Our theory emphasizes the distribution of power between chambers and how equal power distributions can reduce the ability of governments to respond to shifts in public opinion. Drawing on data on public opinion and policy outputs, we analyze the role of citizens’ preferences for the design of welfare and immigration policies across fourteen established democracies.  We find that governments are more responsive to shifts in public opinion in systems with a single dominant chamber than under strong bicameralism. Furthermore, evidence from the case of Belgium, wherein the fourth State Reform shifted power away from the Senate, confirms that policy became more responsive to public opinion after the Senate was weakened.  

These findings are important for theoretical and policy reasons. With respect to theory, we evaluate an often overlooked prediction for how institutions affect democracies. To some, bicameral institutions matter because the presence of an upper chamber reduces prospects for policy outcomes to diverge from the status quo. For others, the influence of such institutional arrangements over policy outcomes stems from the specific distribution of authorized control between chambers over decision-making. We build on both perspectives and show that the number of chambers matters—and so too does the power distribution between them. In terms of policy implications, our study shows that reforms, such as that completed in Belgium in the 1990s and the one proposed in Italy in the 2010s, can strongly affect policy-making processes in democracies. The findings should therefore inform discussions also in other contexts, such as the United Kingdom, where reform of the House of Lords has been a point of discussion for well over a century by members of parliament and constitutional scholars seeking to modernize Britain’s democracy.  

About the Authors: Lawrence Ezrow is a Professor of Government at the University of Essex, Michele Fenzl is a Post-doc in the Institute of Political Science at the University of Zurich, and Timothy Hellwig is a Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. Their research “Bicameralism and Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “Talk May Be Cheap, but Deeds Seldom Cheat: On Political Liberalism and the Assurance Problem” by Baldwin Wong and Man-Kong Li is summarized by the authors below.

Partisan polarization has recently become a pressing problem in contemporary democracies. However, according to John Rawls, political disagreement does not necessarily threaten democracy. Rawls proposed a theory of political liberalism and tried to show that, despite political disagreements, reasonable citizens can still live together in a mutually respectful way. For reasonable citizens share some basic political values, such as freedom, equality, and fairness. They trust each other and are willing to comply with the unfavorable laws made by other reasonable citizens, for they know that others are willing to make similar sacrifices.    

Nevertheless, apart from reasonable citizens, a democratic society also has some unreasonable citizens who merely want to use state power to pursue their sectarian goals. Reasonable citizens are willing to cooperate with each other, but they want to avoid being exploited by unreasonable citizens. Hence, before trusting others, reasonable citizens want to ensure that others are trustworthy. We call this the assurance problem. This problem is more serious among democratic officials who control coercive political power. In other words, in political disagreements, how can a reasonable democratic official ensure that other officials are reasonable as well? In our article, we try to show how the assurance problem can be resolved in Rawls’s political liberalism. 

Usually, Rawlsians suggested that speaking in terms of public reason can provide mutual assurance. By explaining their political decisions in terms of shared political values, officials show each other that they are reasonable citizens committed to these values. This solution, however, has recently been criticized as exaggerating the power of words. The cost of presenting one’s views in terms of public reason is too low. The meanings of political values are usually vague, and thus public reason can be used to defend vastly different policies. Even some unreasonable officials can offer public reasons to fool other reasonable officials. In brief, public reason is merely a kind of “cheap talk.” It is unable to provide any assurance among democratic officials.  

We argue that this “cheap talk critique” wrongly assumes that the discourse of public reason alone is the source of mutual assurance. Rather, mutual assurance is created by the discourse of public reason together with civic deeds. For civic deeds, It means actions that are public-spirited and answerable to others. For example, officials are frequently willing to listen to the arguments of their political opponents respectfully. Or, during the discussion, officials are eager to contribute to public discussions by improving the opponents’ arguments, even if this may strengthen their position. We further use the relationship between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia to show that, despite political disagreement, civic deeds can enable officials to ensure that each other is reasonable.  

Furthermore, the cost of performing civic deeds is high enough for reasonable officials to differentiate their fellows from unreasonable officials. It may be simple to present one’s view in terms of public reason, but it is never easy to perform civic deeds over time continuously. It takes enormous time and effort to always behave in a public-spirited and answerable way in open discussions. Sometimes people also have to give up possible gains for the sake of the common good. Hence, by observing the civic deeds of each other, reasonable officials can ensure that others will act reasonably when they do the same, and thus the assurance problem can be resolved. Talk may be cheap, but deeds seldom cheat. 

About the Authors: Baldwin Wong is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the Hong Kong Baptist University and Man-Kong Li is an Assistant Professor of Social Science at Hang Seng University of Hong Kong. Their research “Talk May Be Cheap, but Deeds Seldom Cheat: On Political  Liberalism and the Assurance Problem” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “How Patronage Delivers: Political Appointments, Bureaucratic Accountability, and Service Delivery in Brazil” by Guillermo Toral is summarized by the author below.

Governments all around the world use political appointments to fill at least some bureaucratic posts. This practice is especially important in developing contexts, where civil service systems are less consolidated. How do political appointments impact public service delivery, governance, and development more broadly? 

The established answer to that question, at least when it comes to developing contexts, is that political appointments jeopardize governance, through two mechanisms – the selection of worse types (e.g., less qualified candidates) and the depression of bureaucrats’ level of effort (because of their connections to those in power).  

In this article, I advance an alternative view of political appointments as an institution that changes not just who enters the bureaucracy or how much they work but also, and critically, how they work. I argue that political appointments facilitate the monitoring of bureaucrats by politicians, enable the application of sanctions and rewards, provide access to material and non-material resources, align priorities and incentives, and increase mutual trust. In so doing, political appointments can facilitate bureaucratic accountability and effectiveness. 

I test this theory using a variety of data and methods (including quasi-experiments, surveys, and in-depth interviews). I focus on municipal governments in Brazil, a context where political appointments coexist with other modes of bureaucratic selection.  

Using a difference-in-discontinuities, I show that politically appointed school directors (or principals) become less effective at boosting student learning when they lose their political connections. This suggests that political connections can be mobilized to increase bureaucratic effectiveness.  

In a regression discontinuity design, I demonstrate that politically appointed school directors who meet a student learning target are less likely to be replaced. This suggests that politicians take bureaucratic effectiveness into consideration when selecting appointees, and use performance metrics to hold them accountable.   

I then use original surveys of bureaucrats and politicians to explore the mechanisms through which political appointments can enhance bureaucratic effectiveness and accountability. I find that appointed bureaucrats have more frequent contact with, higher levels of trust in, and better alignment with politicians than unappointed bureaucrats do. In conjoint experiments with bureaucrats and politicians, I find that political appointees are seen as better at communicating with the government and more responsive to its demands. 

These often-overlooked benefits of patronage suggest that politics in the developing world can be a source not only of corruption and misallocations, but also of governance resources that can help overcome development challenges. The advantages of political appointments may be particularly important in contexts where other, more impartial sources of bureaucratic effectiveness (e.g., high levels of human capital or strong bureaucratic norms) are not yet developed.  

The article also helps explain why political appointments are so important to rent-seeking politicians. By changing how bureaucrats work –for example, by making them more aligned and more easily monitored and sanctioned– political appointments make it easier for corrupt politicians to use the bureaucracy to their advantage. This ambivalence of political appointments helps explain why they have proven to be so resilient throughout history. 

About the Author: Guillermo Toral is an Assistant Professor at IE University, and a Faculty Affiliate at MIT GOV/LAB. Their research “How Patronage Delivers: Political Appointments, Bureaucratic Accountability, and Service Delivery in Brazil” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “Does Relative Deprivation Condition the Effects of Social Protection Programs on Political Support? Experimental Evidence from Pakistan” by Katrina Kosec and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo is summarized by the authors below.

Income inequality within countries is on the rise—a trend currently being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This trend is notable given the growing body of research demonstrating that citizens’ support for and confidence in government is influenced by real and perceived levels of inequality. One of the key ways governments address poverty and inequality is through redistributive social protection programs, including cash transfers. By reallocating wealth, these programs, too, may affect citizen attitudes towards government. Yet, little is known about how perceptions of inequality moderate the relationship between social protection and political support. 

Classic economic voting theory focuses on absolute rather than relative welfare, holding that citizens reward the government for good economic outcomes and punish it for bad ones. However, an emerging literature in political science suggests that relative well-being considerations are important in shaping citizens’ assessments of their political leaders and institutions. Building on this research, we examine whether such comparisons impact the relationship between social protection and political attitudes. 

The empirical literature on how social protection influences political satisfaction and support is mixed. A number of studies demonstrate that receipt of targeted social protection programs increases support for policymakers delivering the program. However, other studies find that targeted government welfare programs do not always translate into political support. We posit that citizens’ perceptions of their relative economic standing can partially explain these mixed empirical findings. 

To test this hypothesis, we evaluate whether the effects of Pakistan’s national unconditional cash transfer program, the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP), on citizen support for and confidence in political leaders and state institutions are moderated by feelings of relative deprivation. That is, does receipt or non-receipt of the BISP differently affect political attitudes according to how well-off citizens feel compared to others? We do so by lveveraging a regression discontinuity design (RDD) overlaid with a survey experiment in Pakistan. In 2010, the Pakistani government used a proxy means test to identify BISP beneficiaries; this generated a cutoff wealth score which we exploit to assess the effects of transfers on political support. To evaluate how perceptions of relative economic position impact these effects, we conducted an original survey priming experiment, which subtly manipulated respondents’ perceptions of their relative economic position, modeled on several recent studies. 

We demonstrate that when feelings of relative poverty are not salient, cash transfers have little effect on citizens’ political support one to four years after transfers were first initiated. But, when feelings of relative poverty are salient, beneficiaries have higher political support than do non-beneficiaries. A natural question is: among those for whom relative poverty is salient, who is driving our effects? Is it that beneficiaries are more positive about their political system and leaders, or is that non-beneficiaries are more politically disgruntled? The short answer is, a little bit of both. However, the magnitude of the reduction in political support among non-beneficiaries is larger than the magnitude of the increase in political support among beneficiaries. 

The fact that we observe an effect among non-beneficiaries highlights that it can be problematic to view non-recipients of an intervention as a “control” group when assessing program effects; even if programs are randomly assigned, as we observed, non-recipients can be affected by the non-receipt of an intervention. 

In sum, we see clear evidence that individuals’ perceptions of their relative deprivation are an important moderator of program effects on political support – and there is a big risk for erosion of government trust due to not getting social protection when one feels deprived and thus deserving. Overall, our research illustrates both the power of beliefs to change political perceptions, as well as the power and limitations of government to mold and shape those beliefs. 

About the Authors: Katrina Kosec is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Their research “Does Relative Deprivation Condition the Effects of Social Protection Programs on Political Support? Experimental Evidence from Pakistan” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.