Controlling Governments: Voters, Institutions, and Accountability

This book contributes to debates in positive democratic theory about accountability and representation. It bridges the gap between formal models and theoretically weak empirical analyses. The chapters stay close to the results of the formal literature, but they provide a more realistic description of how the democratic control of governments operates. The book studies the many obstacles that citizens face to hold governments accountable: (1) voters combine judgments of past performance with other considerations - such as ideological or ethnic criteria; (2) parties in office may limit the information of voters; and (3) institutions bias the exercise of accountability.