Suchergebnisse

Elites' support for democracy and their satisfaction with political leadership are important factors in evaluating Latin American leaders' progress toward consolidating their democracies. However, we know surprisingly little about how elites understand or define democracy and thereby evaluate leaders in terms of progress toward democracy. Much literature on opinions of elites focuses on their relative interest in democratic values and formal institutions. But is progress in these two areas really of utmost importance to elites? To better understand elite views of democracy, the authors use new survey data in which elites assess current politicians' progress toward democracy. They find that the importance of perceived progress in democratic values—civil rights and civil liberties—and formal institutions is minor compared to the impact of perceptions of economic progress; elites' evaluations of democratic progress depend primarily on their perceptions of economic success and only secondarily on perceptions of achievement of democratic values.

To what extent is party loyalty a liability for incumbent legislators? Past research on legislative voting and elections suggests that voters punish members who are ideologically "out of step" with their districts. In seeking to move beyond the emphasis in the literature on the effects of ideological extremity on legislative vote share, we examine how partisan loyalty can adversely affect legislators' electoral fortunes. Specifically, we estimate the effects of each legislator's party unity—the tendency of a member to vote with his or her party on salient issues that divide the two major parties—on vote margin when running for reelection. Our results suggest that party loyalty on divisive votes can indeed be a liability for incumbent House members. In fact, we find that voters are not punishing elected representatives for being too ideological; they are punishing them for being too partisan.