Do the Poor Count?: Democratic Institutions and Accountability in a Context of Poverty

Chapter 3: Institutions and Poor People's Confidence in their Legislature

King, Keohane, and Verba (1994) urge researchers to find multiple observable implications of theory. For the role of institutions in a context of poverty, a variety of macro and micro observable implications exist. This chapter presents the first of several observable implications of when poor people count in Latin American countries by using cross-national data about poor people’s confidence in their legislatures. The theory presented in this book has two aims: One aim is to explore how combinations of institutions affect the ability of different segments of society to sanction elected officials. A second aim is to explore how combinations of institutions constrain the viable strategies of politicians and thus incentives to represent poor people. Because elected officials are expected to respond to the threat of monitoring and sanctions from citizens, one type of observable implication about how institutions affect representation of the poor is how poor people evaluate the institution in which those elected officials serve—the legislature. In this chapter I examine the hypothesis that more poor people will have confidence in their national legislature in countries where the institutional milieu makes it more feasible for them to sanction legislators than in countries where institutions make it costly for poor people to sanction. The legislature is intended to be the representative branch of democratic government. While representative democracy is based on the principle of one person, one vote, in reality all types of people are not equal in ability to monitor and sanction representatives (Rubenstein 2007). Poor people have a An earlier version of parts of this chapter was published in Spanish in Perspectivas para la democracia en America Latína, ed. Leticia Heras Gómez and John A. Booth, 353–83 (Toluca, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Mexico, 2009). THREE institutions and poor people’s confidence in their legislature limited capacity to monitor what elected officials do in office, and by extension have limited ability to monitor the legislature, so they are less likely than other people to sanction. The theory of incentives to represent the poor predicts that the sanctioning capacity of poor people will vary across institutional contexts. Some electoral rules, nomination procedures, and forms of clientelism make it very costly for a poor person to sanction, so such institutional settings create little incentive for legislators to represent poor people. A legislator may still personally want to help poor people, but in such an institutional setting the legislator is unlikely to be rewarded for the effort, while rich people who have a greater capacity to monitor may punish the legislator. Potential political aspirants will observe what types of work in the congress are likely to promote a political career, and if their personal interest is to help poor people and communities , they will decide not to enter the political arena as a legislator (or will exit after serving only one term).1 In those types of institutional settings I predict more poor people will have a negative evaluation of their congress (relative to evaluations in institutional settings where it is more feasible for poor people to sanction), because it is made up primarily of legislators who have little incentive to represent them. On the other hand, some electoral rules, nomination procedures, and forms of clientelism empower poor people (again, relative to the sanctioning capacity of poor people in other institutional settings) because a poor person does not incur a high personal cost for sanctioning. A sanction by one disgruntled poor constituent will not end a legislator’s career, yet poor people’s capacity to sanction at low personal cost creates an incentive for members of congress to attend to their poor constituents. In such an institutional setting, political aspirants will observe that attending to poor constituents helps build a political career, so politicians who want to represent poor people will enter politics, and they will be able to build careers in government.2 In these types of institutional settings, I expect more poor people to have a favorable evaluation of their congress, because it is made up of many legislators who respond to incentives to represent them. The analysis in this chapter will not detect if a poor person “loves their congressperson but hates congress” (a well-known phenomenon in the United 54 d o t h e p o o r c o u n t ? 1. In chapter 6, I show how this type of complaint prompted some Constituency Server deputies in Honduras to opt to not seek reelection...