Controlling Governments

This book contributes to debates in positive democratic theory about accountability and representation. It bridges the gap between formal models and theoretically weak empirical analyses. The chapters stay close to the results of the formal literature, but they provide a more realistic description of how the democratic control of governments operates. The book studies the many obstacles that citizens face to hold governments accountable: (1) voters combine judgments of past performance with other considerations – such as ideological or ethnic criteria; (2) parties in office may limit the information of voters; and (3) institutions bias the exercise of accountability.

José María Maravall is the Director of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Juan March Institute (Madrid). He is also a Professor of Sociology at the Universidad Complutense (Madrid), an Honorary Fellow of St. Antony's College (Oxford University), and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He holds doctorates from the universities of Madrid and Oxford. He was a socialist member of Parliament and Minister of Education and Science from 1982 to 1988. His previous publications include Economic Reforms in New Democracies (1993); Regimes, Politics, and Markets (1997); and (with A. Przeworski) Democracy and the Rule of Law (2003).

Ignacio Sanchez-Cuenca is Professor of Political Science at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Juan March Institute (Madrid). He is also Associate Professor of Sociology at the Universidad Complutense (Madrid). He has been the Rice Visiting Associate Professor at Yale University, Visiting Scholar at New York University, and has held positions at Universidad Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) and University of Salamanca. He has published three books in Spanish; articles in journals such as Government and Opposition; Party Politics; European Union Politics; and the European Journal of Sociology; as well as several Spanish journals. He also has chapters in several edited volumes, including Democracy and the Rule of Law (2003), edited by J. M. Maravall and A. Przeworski.