Do voters keep track of what politicians do? For the most part, no.

Democracy For Realists: Longer terms lead to better government. Voters punish politicians when the weather is bad.

Do voters keep track of what politicians do? For the most part, no. And when bad things happen in the world, the voters will punish the elected officials, even when the politicians had no power over the events. For instance, if bad weather causes the price of food to go up, the voters will punish those in power, even though those in power do not control the weather:

Democracy for Realists, 2016

Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

By Christopher H. Achen & Larry M. Bartels

Page 112-113

The apparent irrationality of the electorate’s vengeance and reward has been remarked by many political observers over the years. Indeed, in both of the 19th-century examples we cited earlier, the prominent politician on the losing end of the electorate’s vengeance wrote feelingly of its illogic. President Buchanan, whose party was stung by the effect of the Panic of 1857, protested that “the administration are as responsible for the motions of the Comet as for the low price of iron” (Huston 1987, 167). For his part, Prime Minister Disraeli (after some bad weather caused the voters to be angry with his government) complained (Moneypenny and Buckle 1929, 1395). “Never was so great a discomfiture with a cause so inadequate. I think, as far as I can collect, ‘hard times’ was the cry against us. The suffering want a change – no matter what, they are sick of waiting.”

Presumably, voters in Victorian Britain did not imagine that their government controlled the weather, but that did not prevent them from exacting vengeance at the polls in the wake of a wrenching succession of bad harvests.

For this reason, longer terms in office, for elected politicians, can lead to better government. In particular, electing the legislature at a staggered schedule, so no one election can determine the majority of the legislature, protects the nation from having a bad legislature chosen when the public just so happens to be in an irrationally bad mood.

If legislators were elected for a single term of 11 years, with annual elections electing 1/11th of the legislature, then the democracies would probably enjoy much better leadership than what they currently get.

Every time I say this someone says, “But if the voters can’t punish the politician at the next election, why would that politician behave well while in office?” Here they unthinkingly invoke the so-called “retrospective” model of voting, in which voters keep track of what a politician does, and then rewards them with re-election if the politician did well, or punishes them if the politician did not do well. And yet, the evidence is strong that, in real life, voters do not keep track of what politicians are doing. The “retrospective” model of voting is a fantasy, a dangerous myth that keeps people from seeing how democracies actually work. Achen & Bartels devote much of their book to showing how deeply flawed the so-called “retrospective” model of voting really is.

[Are voters “a rational god of vengeance and of reward?”] Scholars who have quoted Key’s colorful phrase have mostly failed to note that he used it derisively. “The Founding Fathers,” he wrote in the final edition of his influential textbook on party politics, “by the provision for midterm elections, built into the constitutional system a procedure whose strange consequences lack explanation in any theory that personifies the electorate as a rational god of vengeance and of reward.”

In the first edition of the same textbook, Key (1942, 628) offered an even clearer dismissal of the rational interpretation of retrospective voting, noting that voters seem to have rewarded and punished incumbents at the polls for good or bad times even before it could be said that the national Government could do much of anything to improve their condition….

Yet if the party control of the national Government had little or nothing to do with their fate, how is this behavior to be explained? Is it to be considered as a rational seeking to better one’s status by the ballot or is it merely blindly striking a blow at a scapegoat? To throw out the “ins” probably had about the same effect on economic conditions as evangelical castigation of Satan has on the moral situation. Perhaps the swing against the “ins” can best be described as a displacement of economic resentment on political objects. By this catharsis discontent was dissipated and the peace kept.

Politicians can be made to serve the public only by a system of checks and balances, of which an active civil society is the most important part: newspapers, media, and the endless array of pressure groups, including labor unions, churches, professional organizations, and more. While voting is part of that system of checks and balances, research suggests that it is currently one of the weakest.

Conflict among elite groups opens up important avenues through which less powerful groups can demand accountability from the system, as the less powerful group joins a coalition supporting one of the more powerful elite groups.

When considering how to empower weak groups, consider this: if a weak group manages to elect a legislator who is willing to do battle on behalf of that weak group, then short terms in office only weaken that legislator, and therefore help keep the weak group permanently weak. Longer terms in office at least allow the elected legislators to go out and fight. If workers want to elect someone who will fight against the political influence of the corporations, they should keep in mind that the average CEO holds the role for 7 years and the most powerful CEOs hold their roles for 12 years. And so that is how long a legislator needs to be elected for, if they are to fight as an equal against the CEOs.

The mandate of heaven

The phrase “There, but for the grace of God, go I” has always had two different interpretations. One is that we should feel sympathy for the sufferer because only God has saved us from similar suffering. The other is we should condemn the sufferer, because if they had the grace of God they would not be suffering, therefore they don’t have the grace of God, therefore they must have done something that angered God, therefore we should be angry with them too.

Here is one of the fundamental ur-religious beliefs of the world, seen at times in every culture: God (the gods) want us to behave correctly (show deference to all appropriate rituals) and will reward us if we do so, or punish us otherwise. Likewise, the leaders of the nation (community), and the health and wealth of the nation (community). So if the nation (community) is suffering, it is because the leadership did something to make God (the gods) angry. So if Britain is suffering bad weather when the Tories are in power, it’s because the Tories did something to offend God.

Put differently, the leaders, to lead well, must have the mandate of heaven. This is shown by victory in battle, and general prosperity. If the leaders lose the mandate of heaven, then they need to be kicked out.

Can you build a democracy when people vote based on non-secular and non-scientific beliefs? Clearly, since such people have formed a large group in every democracy that has ever existed.

But, as we discussed in the previous essays, this implies that the benefits of democracy arise from some structural factor, divorced from the logic and rationality of the voter.

Therefore, when we think about designing a strong democracy, we need to think about this in terms of engineering. This is not a matter of asking the voters to be smart. This is a matter of putting processes in place that will allow the leadership to actually accomplish things, while still facing the accountability that is brought by an open, liberal, civil society. Longer terms in office, and staggered elections to the legislature, are one of those structural factors that can offset the irrationality of the voter.