Political Institutions and Quality Outcomes

How can the design of democratic political institutions help, or obstruct, the achievement of such goals as Pareto optimality, responsiveness, and so on? To explore this, begin by considering the general necessity of political institutions and then the general difficulties in holding such institutions responsible to the citizenry.

We have already seen how some aspects of institutional design can affect outcomes. For example, in Part II we examined how filibuster rules and other institutional details can change expected outcomes. We also noticed that attributes of voters’ preferences such as alienation can affect electoral outcomes. In Part I we saw how disorganization can affect the preservation of common-pool resources and how, with collective outcomes, there is a tendency for free-riding and rational ignorance. These conclusions stemmed from assumptions about individual behavior. Here, however, we consider particular problems of institutional design per se.

To frame the discussion, I address two big questions in Chapter 6: first, “Are political systems really necessary?” And then, “Why is it so hard to tether political leaders to act in the interests of their subjects?”