How Political Institutional Arrangements Shape Public Policy

This article identifies the extent of electoral suffrage as the key element in determining how political institutional arrangements shape public policy. Provided a political system is democratic, underpinned by free and fair elections with universal suffrage, public preferences, as expressed through elections, are largely translated into public policy. Under any system—proportional, majoritarian, or hybrid—results generally reflect the direction of public opinion, although the winning party under majoritarian systems is over-represented compared with its vote share. However, where political institutional arrangements restrict the size of the electorate who choose policymakers (as with often relatively ad hoc internal party mechanisms for choosing party leaders), their effect upon public policy is greater than otherwise. This article draws upon Powell’s (2004) “chain of responsiveness” and principal-agent theory (Strøm, 2000), along with Golder and Stramski (2010), to analyse how public preferences are translated into public policy. It emphasises elections as the key linkage in Powell’s chain. It argues that whilst elected representatives are not obliged to follow voters’ wishes, having to answer to voters in elections provides their most powerful incentive to do so. Furthermore, it posits bureaucracies are subordinate to executives, underlining the primacy of elections with universal suffrage in shaping public policy.