Political Institutions and Quality Outcomes

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

We have already seen how some aspects of institutional design can affectoutcomes. For example, in Part II we examined how filibuster rules and otherinstitutional details can change expected outcomes. We also noticed thatattributes of voters’ preferences such as alienation can affect electoraloutcomes. In Part I we saw how disorganization can affect the preservation ofcommon-pool resources and how, with collective outcomes, there is a tendency forfree-riding and rational ignorance. These conclusions stemmed from assumptionsabout individual behavior. Here, however, we consider particular problems ofinstitutional design per se.

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