Since the beginnings of democracy, debate has raged as to how responsive politicians are to their constituents. Though such debates stretch back centuries, only recently have academics gotten the ability to use data to test how well legislatures represent the people they ostensibly serve. So far, the evidence hasn’t been kind, with two leading academics arguing recently that, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Much of the academic work, and nearly all of the press coverage of the field, has focused solely on the United States. In a new working paper, a luminary in the field, political scientist Larry Bartels, expands his analysis to explore the relationship between policy and public preferences to the international arena. First, Bartels finds increasing demand for a stronger safety net across in many countries where data stretch back more than two decades, including the United States. (Indeed, support for more social spending has increased the most dramatically in […]