1
"…a key characteristic of democracy is the continuing responsiveness of the government to the
preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals."
Robert
Dahl,
Polyarchy,
p.1
The ability of citizens to influence public policy is the "bottom line" of democratic
government. While few would expect or even desire a perfect correspondence between majority
preference and government policy, the nature of the connection between what citizens want and
what government does is a central consideration in evaluating the quality of democratic
governance.
Without elections, policy makers would have little incentive to consider the preferences
of the governed. But do elections help ensure that the "voice of the people" is heard in the halls
of government? Or do elections empower only a privileged subset of citizens who possess the
financial and other resources to influence the political process?
Considerable prior research has examined the relationship between government policy
and the preferences of the public taken as a whole. The project I report on here asks whose
preferences are most influential in shaping policy decisions. While democracy requires that
government policy reflect the preferences of the governed--at least in broad outlines over the
long run--true democracy also requires that all citizens, not just the powerful or well-off, have an
influence over government policies.
In the pages that follow, I report findings from a project that seeks to understand
inequalities in government responsiveness to the preferences of the governed. To assess citizen
influence over government policy, I combine survey measures of an extensive array of public
preferences collected over the past two decades with evaluations of actual government
policymaking. The broader project will examine changes over time in the relationship between
Convention