There are two very different logics of voting, the logic of ideology and the logic of
incumbent's performance. A citizen may vote out of ideological closeness to parties or …

Question 6 concerns the broader question of whether democratic forms of government are
preferable to the alternatives; see Christiano (2006) on the justification of democracy for a …

The typical rational account of elections involves standard-setting: voters deciding to retain
or replace an incumbent politician, based on whether the incumbent's performance meets a …

It may seem somewhat obvious to state that citizens, when voting, take government
performance into consideration. However, it is one of the most fundamental ingredients of …

Though few voters appear to hold consistent ideological views, the roll call votes of
congressmen and senators can be well predicted by ideological terms. An explanation for …

In a functioning democracy, the legitimacy of government rests on citizens' confidence in the
political system and its decisions. The ability to express preferences and consider these …

Conclusion A politician's preferences do matter. He is not simply a captured agent speaking
only for his constituent's interests. Some latitude exists for him to shirk his responsibility to …

Should voting be compulsory? Many people believe that it should, and that countries, like
Britain, which have never had compulsion, ought to adopt it. As is common with such things …

In this paper we address the following question: To what extent is the hypothesis that voters
vote “ideologically”(ie, they always vote for the candidate who is ideologically “closest” to …

Governments in representative democracies may have incentives to pursue policies that do
not align with voters' preferences. When voters lack information about the policy bias of the …