Description: This book develops and tests a "thermostatic" model of public opinion and policy, in which preferences for policy both drive and adjust to changes in policy. The representation of opinion in policy is central to democratic theory and everyday politics. So too is the extent to which public preferences are informed and responsive to changes in policy. The coexistence of both "public responsiveness" and "policy representation" is thus a defining characteristic of successful democratic governance, and the subject of this book. The authors examine both responsiveness and representation across a range of policy domains in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The story that emerges is one in which representative democratic government functions surprisingly well, though there are important differences in the details. Variations in public responsiveness and policy representation responsiveness are found to reflect the "salience" of the different domains and governing institutions - specifically, presidentialism (versus parliamentarism) and federalism (versus unitary government).
Brief description: Christopher Wlezien is Professor of Political Science and Faculty Affiliate in the Institute for Public Affairs at Temple University. He previously was on the faculty at Oxford University, where he was Reader of Comparative Government and a Fellow of Nuffield College. While at Oxford, he co-founded the ESRC-funded Oxford Spring School in Quantitative Methods for Social Research. Prior to Oxford, he taught at the University of Houston, where he was founding director of the Institute for the Study of Political Economy. His articles have appeared in several collections, including Britain Votes and The Future of Election Studies, as well as journals including the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, and the Canadian Journal of Political Science.
Review Quotes: "This extraordinary book sets out to describe and test a mechanism by which government policy might respond to changes in the preferences of citizens, and citizens might adjust their preferences in light of the policies that governments enact. In the process it investigates the preconditions for efficient working of representative democracy. The authors have meticulously collected the data needed to evaluate the efficiency of representation in three countries - the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom - and have devised rigorous tests that employ these data. The results not only tell us how democracy works but also how well it works in these three countries, providing major insights regarding the impact of institutional differences on representation processes."
-Mark Franklin, European University Institute