Research

Christian Breunig and Emiliano Grossmann

The basic premise of democratic governance is that government represents citizen wishes. In its simplest form, governments assess citizen wishes based on electoral outcomes and publicly expressed problems and respond to these demands by enacting laws. Citizens inturn readjust their priorities as policies change. This project examines if and when governments respond to citizen demands. Our main contention is that government responsiveness is not constant and not a given; instead it is conditioned on the electoral pressure placed on government. We conceptualize electoral pressure in two ways: proximity to the election and government approval ratings. Governments are most responsive shortly before elections and when their electoral fortunes are threatened. We focus on polls on government popularity as an indicator of government approval between elections; electoral polls are used as an indicator of closeness. The proposal acknowledges previous work that explores how the linkage between citizens and government is modified by political institutions, such as electoral system, the type of government, and federalism. In addition to offering a more nuanced understanding of political responsiveness, the project delivers an innovative research design. Our investigation leverages empirical insights from two sources. First, we conduct a quantitative analysis of political activities using comparative policy agendas data. Second, we test the micro-level mechanisms at the government and citizen level using a survey. In short, this project delivers an important contribution to the understanding of when governments listen to public demands and provides evidence for the conditionality of responsiveness in Western democracies.

Christian Breunig und Chris Koski, Reed College

Public budgets are characterized by periods of incrementalism interspersed with massive change. Both phases are conceptualized as parts of a punctuated equilibrium. The project aims at assessing how much agenda-setting and veto powers of governors contribute to the punctuations in budgets. We examine this question using budgetary from the American states since the 1980s.

Christian Breunig

The German agenda-setting project is developing several data sets on issue attention and policy-making in Germany. The following data are coded (1978-2008): Most important problem surveys, media, lobby groups, parliamentary questions, executive speeches, bill proposals and adopted laws. All data are classified by policy topic according to the Comparative Policy Agendas system and will become available at German Policy Agendas.

Miriam Hänni

Policy responsiveness is a key criterion of democratic quality, but politics is not equally responsive to all population subgroups. In this project I study responsiveness towards political subgroups whose representation is potentially endangered. In particular, I study questions of responsiveness towards three types of subgroups across European democracies: socio-economically poorer groups, electoral losers, and ethnic minorities. The focus on European democracies allows me to compare responsiveness across different institutional systems and generalize the findings beyond single cases.