Democratic Responsiveness

One of the central claims of democratic theory is that the institutional features of democracy systematically cause government to respond to the people’s needs. In fact, however, democracy might logically be expected to be especially responsive only to the people’s desires, not their needs. Responses to people’s objective needs can be substantially different from responses to their subjective desires. Democratic institutions therefore cannot guarantee (and may even hamper) responsiveness to basic human needs. Democracy, should, at least in principle, thus be confined to the sphere of wants rather than needs.

La investigación tiene como objetivo medir la calidad informativa de la publicidad electoral televisiva utilizada por los candidatos. Delimita el análisis empírico a la oferta política difundida en 205 anuncios electorales producidos por el Partido Acción Nacional, el Partido Revolucionario Institucional y el Partido de la Revolución Democrática en las elecciones locales de los estados de la república mexicana que presentaron alternancia en las gubernaturas en el periodo 2009-2010. Como estrategia metodológica se desarrolla un análisis de contenido circunscrito al componente verbal. Los resultados son de carácter descriptivo.

Despite a considerable amount of research over the last three decades, an unequivocal conclusion regarding democracy’s impact on social outcomes has not been reached. This paper attempts to enhance understanding of the impact of political regimes on social outcomes by applying a dimensional approach. Unlike previous studies, which have focused on the overall effect of democracy, this paper separates the dimension of elite competition from the dimension of popular participation and tests their relative effects on the satisfaction of basic needs. Cross-national statistical tests demonstrate that effective participation has a positive effect on need satisfaction, whereas excessive competition has a negative impact. Theoretical explanations of these different impacts are provided. It is argued that the best way to understand the relationship between democracy and social outcomes is to realize that democracy’s overall effect might conceal the existence of opposing effects of its component parts. This finding suggests more nuanced ways of reforming political systems that bypass the possible trade-off between democratization and social development.

This article is an attempt to explain the specific features of China's socially oriented policy at the beginning of the 21st century from the point of view of a systemic and functional analysis of the PRC political system. Despite the limited character of the existing democratic mechanisms in the country, the Chinese authorities demonstrate a sufficiently high level of responsiveness to the everyday needs of the population, which have become strained in the course of market reforms. The article presents an analysis disclosing certain transformation processes of the political regime of modern China.