THE SNS DEMOCRATIC AUDIT 2002/SNS DEMOKRATIRÅD 2002
Democracy without accountability
Report from the Democratic Audit of Sweden 2002
Olof Petersson, Leif Lewin, Sören Holmberg, and Hanne Marthe Narud
Summary in English
Governments lose elections, but retain power. European data from 1945 show that government parties often are punished by the voters and that this negative trend has become even stronger during the last decades. In the 1990's the average government in Western Europe registered a net loss of 6.3 percentage points.
In most cases governments that lose votes continue to stay in office. The likelihood of retaining government position after the election is almost as high among losing parties when compared to government parties that gain votes. The Swedish case in fact reveals a negative correlation in this respect. After an electoral defeat a government party has a somewhat higher likelihood of staying in power, compared to winning parties.
The weak link between voter opinion and government formation indicates that the principal-agent chain of representative democracy is not working properly. In this sense democracy lacks accountability. Elected representatives and the political system are not particularly responsive to voter signals.
The SNS Democratic Audit of Sweden evaluates the actual practice of parliamentary democracy. The 2002 report pinpoints some major deficiencies and outlines some roads for possible reforms.
1. Stronger emphasis on accountability
Free and general elections are the most important instrument for voters to affect collective decisions. Elections make it possible to hold political decision-makers accountable.
Reestablish representative democracy
Contemporary debate on democracy is filled with ideas about new forms of participation. Different forms of citizen involvement can play an important supplementary role, but they cannot replace representative democracy. The core values of representative democracy run the risk of disappearing among the plethora of reform proposals.
Representative democracy is faced with an image problem, since the alternative is often branded as "direct" democracy. This terminology may be highly misleading. Representative democracy is not "indirect" in the sense that it constitutes a fake or weak form of democracy. It is quite to the contrary.
Elections are not only about mandates but also about sanctions
Two contrasting conceptions of democratic elections can be distilled from the philosophical debate: the mandate theory and the sanction theory.
According to mandate theory democratic representation is achieved by issue agreement between voters and politicians. Political parties present their future oriented platforms to the electorate, and the individual voter picks the alternative that is closest to his or her ideal point in a policy space. The primary task of the elected politicians is to follow the mandate given by the voters.
A different perspective is offered by sanction theory. Here representation is here achieved by the electorate's retroactive assessment of past policies. Politicians are supposed to make decisions, which afterwards are judged by the voters. At election time citizens either retain the incumbent government or replace it with the opposition alternative.
The sanction theory is today only given scant attention in public debate as well as in political science research. The mandate theory is often taken for granted as the only possible interpretation of democratic elections. But effective representation requires sanctions as well as mandates. The voters must be given real opportunities of assessing how their elected leaders have performed.
2. Streamlining parliamentary government
The parliamentary system of government needs to be strengthened, particularly the power of voters to hold leaders accountable by efficient sanctions.
The Riksdag is the foremost representative of the people
Today there are few possibilities for voters to influence the government directly. Most reform proposals seem to be deficient. The Israelean experiment with a directly elected prime minister must be regarded as a failure. There are no feasible ways of combining parliamentary and presidential forms of government. The only alternative is to strengthen the parliamentary chain of delegation. Voters elect a parliament, which forms the political basis for the cabinet. In Sweden this means that the Riksdag plays a key role as an accountability mechanism in the parliamentary process.
Explicit parliamentary support favors strong governments
The parliamentary system demands that the cabinet is based on the confidence of parliament. The specific form of regulation laid out in the Swedish constitution has major drawbacks. The negative principle, meaning that any cabinet can stay in power as long as the Riksdag majority does not vote against it, has increased the risk of deadlocks.
There are strong arguments for a revision of the constitutional rules. A comparison with countries such as Finland and Germany speaks in favor of the positive type of parliamentary government. This means that any cabinet must be supported by a majority of the parliament, through a vote of investiture. Contrary to the present situation the composition of the government should always be decided upon after each election. Then the government must be explicitly approved by a parliamentary majority.
Voters should decide about extraordinary elections
According to the Swedish constitution the government may order an extraordinary election for the Riksdag to be held between ordinary elections. Voters would then be called to settle a dispute between the legislative and the executive branches of government. From a democratic point of view the powers to call an extraordinary election should also be given to the voters. This reform would introduce a new element to the Swedish polity. If opinion polls consistently show a clear citizen majority in favor of a new election, the Riksdag should be dissolved and the voters given the opportunity to elect a new chamber.
3. Clear government alternatives
Voters encounter increasing difficulties when it comes to holding the government accountable in general elections. Sweden has been ruled by minority governments since 1981 and it is often unclear which parties support which decisions. For instance, are the Left Party and the Green Party to be regarded as government parties or opposition parties during the 2002 election campaign?
Fewer parties simplify accountability
During the last two decades the number of political parties has increased. Surveys also show that voters find it more and more difficult to discern policy differences between parties. The growing fragmentation of the party system has made it more difficult for voters to hold political leaders accountable.
A shadow government would increase the visibility of the opposition
Swedish politics is marked by an unbalanced situation, since one party has dominated the executive branch for many years. Alternation between the political blocs is a rare event.
The weakness of the opposition can primarily be attributed to the lack of organizational cohesion. The four non-socialist parties do not only fight the Social Democrats but also each other. As long as the election system is not changed, or parties amalgamate, other alternatives have to be found in order to create a more concentrated opposition. The idea of a shadow government has not been tried in Swedish politics. Opposition parties seeking a credible platform could jointly appoint authoritative shadow ministers to match the members of government.
According to a survey with Swedish political science professors, the non-socialist parties also have a leadership problem. The evaluation of the performance of prime ministers in modern Swedish history is on the average lower for non-socialist leaders compared to that of Social Democratic heads of government.
4. Better information to the voters
Election studies prove that Swedish voters are relatively well informed. But voters are not given enough information as a base for comparing government policy and opposition alternatives.
Political parties and mass media should also account for the past
The information material distributed to the voters in the last election campaign had serious flaws. Party manifestos were dominated by promises about the future, while past performance was given only scant attention.
The Riksdag should report to the voters
Before each election the Riksdag should give each eligible voter a concentrated and comprehensible report on what has been achieved during the past election period. This report should give an account, as objective as possible, of the most important decisions, which parties stand behind the decisions, what were the alternatives under debate and the actual outcome of the decisions. The Speaker of the Riksdag should be formally responsible for this report, which can be based on audit reports, accountability agencies, as well as academic studies. The political parties should be given the opportunity of supplementing the official report with their own interpretations of the political past.
5. Clear separation of powers
Parliamentary accountability presumes that voters know what is within the government's powers and what is outside its sphere of responsibility. Lack of clarity here means that voters may sanction the government for matters beyond its control. Alternatively, the government might escape punishment due to voter misperceptions.
Illuminating the gray zones between the public and the private sectors
Deregulation, outsourcing, competition, new public management, privatization and other administrative reforms have often led to unclear responsibilities. Who is in charge when the trains stop running: the transport minister or the train companies?
Enhancing multilevel governance
Even if the Riksdag is the foremost representative of the people, it is certainly not their only representative. Voters also elect representatives to local councils and county councils, as well as to the European parliament. Multilevel governance implies that voters must know, at least in broad terms, what political decisions the elected body is to be held accountable for. Today these lines of demarcation are often blurred. This means that voters are left with few real possibilities of using the elections as a sanctioning mechanism.
Better separation of the political and administrative roles
Another deficiency in the Swedish polity is the unclear division of tasks between politicians and bureaucrats. Management by objectives and a decentralized organization have contributed to this confusing of political and administrative roles. A recent scandal, caused by the failure of a railway tunnel project, revealed that several key people had been idle, waiting for someone else to solve the problems. Cases like this lead to a democracy without accountability.
Demokrati utan ansvar. Demokratirådets rapport 2002.
Olof Petersson, Leif Lewin, Sören Holmberg, and Hanne Marthe Narud
SNS Förlag, Stockholm 2002.
The Democratic Audit of Sweden is organized by SNS, the Swedish Center for Business and Policy Studies, a Stockholm-based research organization. The task set itself by successive Democratic Audit Groups has been to contribute to a constructive, objective debate on the workings of Swedish democracy by highlighting different aspects of the Swedish political system. The group is variously composed each year, but it is always made up of four to five independent social scientists.
