Political Accountability Under Alternative Institutional Regimes

Abstract

We analyze the interaction between electoral accountability and separation-of-powers by comparing three regimes: ‘Unilateral Authority’ (the President has exclusive decision-making power); ‘Mandatory Checks’ (the President cannot change policy without congressional assent); and ‘Opt-in Checks’ (the President may seek congressional authorization or act unilaterally). We find: (1) voters use asymmetric electoral rewards and punishments to offset the risk of politician bias, but voters rely less on this blunt instrument if there are internal checks; (2) adding a veto player need not alter the ex ante likelihood of policy change; and (3) voter welfare is highest under Opt-In Checks and lowest under Unilateral Authority.

Judicial Review as a Response to Political Posturing

“…Future work might also incorporate certain important concerns about judicial review this article has bracketed, such as judicial bias. More generally, the framework we develop here, when combined with the emerging literature on separationof-powers between elected branches of government (e.g., Fox and Van Weelden 2010;Persson, Roland, and Tabellini 1997;Stephenson and Nzelibe 2010), may facilitate direct comparisons between judicial and political oversight of government decision making--a crucial issue in contemporary legal and policy debates, which the extant political economy literature has not fully engaged.…”

Does Separation of Powers Promote Stability and Moderation?

“…Although the electoral consequences of the first-period choice might make different levels of extremism more or less attractive, and might likewise affect the strength of a party's interest in insulating its measures from future repeal, so long as those effects are not so large that they swamp all other considerations, then the qualitative results identified in the simplified model presented here would continue to obtain, though perhaps in attenuated (or enhanced) form. 14 If the first-period government enacted the statute, the second-period government can choose 11 Other contributions explore how separation-of-powers interacts with electoral incentives (Fox and Van Weelden 2010;Persson, Roland and Tabellini 1997;Stephenson and Nzelibe 2010;Vlaicu 2008); the analysis in this paper can be seen as complementary to these efforts, though fully integrating their insights is a task for future research.…”

Political Selection with Cynical Voters

“…However, the separation of powers and checks and balances also play an important role in political accountability. There is little literature on this subject, but there is important work that analyzes how the separation of powers and checks and balances contribute to the effectiveness of elections in selecting politicians and providing the right incentives (Persson, Roland, and Tabellini, 1997;Stephenson and Nzelibe, 2010). This looks like a promising extension to the simple model presented in this paper.…”