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Understanding the Significance of Elections in Democracy

Explore why elections are crucial for democracy, their functions, and the necessity to uphold legitimacy. Learn about solving principal-agent issues and ensuring governmental responsiveness in electoral processes. Compare the US elections with global contexts like Iran and Russia, and delve into the implications of Election 2000. Assess conditions for legitimacy, accountability, and governmental effectiveness.

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Understanding the Significance of Elections in Democracy

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  1. Why are elections important to democracy? A framework for evaluating elections and campaigns

  2. Freewrite Why are elections important to democracy? What functions do elections perform? What is necessary for elections to serve those functions? You will hand this freewrite in for participation credit!

  3. What functions do elections serve in a democracy?

  4. What functions do elections serve in a democracy? 1. Supply legitimacy 2. Solve principal-agent problems 3. Ensure governmental responsiveness

  5. Ensuring legitimacy of the government • Legitimacy: acceptance of the right of public officials to hold office and to promulgate policies because of the means by which they were chosen.

  6. What’s the difference between the US and other countries? In the news: Iran? Russia? Election 2000

  7. Who really won the election of 2000?

  8. What is necessary to ensure legitimacy? • Acceptance of rules • Public faith in system? • Free speech and association • Equal access to voting • Accurately count votes • Fairly weight votes • Enforceable election laws • Government must be somewhat effective

  9. 2. Solving Principal-Agent Problems • (Holding representatives in check) • Principal = voters • Agent = representative

  10. What conditions allow elections to alleviate principle-agent problems? • Frequent elections • Competitive elections   • Political information generally available

  11. 3. Ensure governmental responsiveness • Elections should cause democratic government to translate citizen preferences into policy.

  12. What conditions promote governmental responsiveness? • Voters have access to information about: • policy problems • Candidates • the performance of incumbents

  13. What questions can we ask about our own electoral system based on this framework?

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