The Democratic Deficit in the States
Abstract
We study how well states translate public opinion into policy. Using national surveys and advances in subnational opinion estimation, we estimate state‐level support for 39 policies across eight issue areas, including abortion, law enforcement, health care, and education. We show that policy is highly responsive to policy‐specific opinion, even controlling for other influences. But we also uncover a striking “democratic deficit”: policy is congruent with majority will only half the time. The analysis considers the influence of institutions, salience, partisan control of government, and interest groups on the magnitude and ideological direction of this democratic deficit. We find the largest influences to be legislative professionalization, term limits, and issue salience. Partisanship and interest groups affect the ideological balance of incongruence more than the aggregate degree thereof. Finally, policy is overresponsive to ideology and party—leading policy to be polarized relative to state electorates.
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Correspondence between public opinion and policy outcomes is an important indicator of electoral democracy.
“Most literature in American politics, including on state politics, argues that correspondence between public opinion and policy outcomes is an important indicator of electoral democracy.”
From Laboratories of Democratic Backsliding (2023) · cites this paper as Lax and Phillips 2012
The correlation between estimated ideal points for the median Twitter user in each state and the proportion of citizens in each state that hold liberal opinions (as estimated by Lax and Phillips 2012) is 0.876.
“The correlation between these two variables is ¼ 0:876, and it is higher than the correlation with the proportion of the twoparty vote for Obama in 2012 ( ¼ 0:785), which suggests that the meaning of the emerging dimension in my estimation is closer to ideology than to partisanship.”
From Birds of the Same Feather Tweet Together: Bayesian Ideal Point Estimation Using Twitter Data (2015) · cites this paper as Lax and Phillips 2012
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Tweeting From Left to Right: Is Online Political Communication More Than an Echo Chamber?
Barberá, P., Jost, J. T., Nagler, J., Tucker, J. A., & Bonneau, R. (2015) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797615594620 · Cited by 1,472 · see citing works
Birds of the Same Feather Tweet Together: Bayesian Ideal Point Estimation Using Twitter Data
Barberá, P. (2015) · Political Analysis · doi:10.1093/pan/mpu011 · Cited by 982 · see citing works
Laboratories of Democratic Backsliding
GRUMBACH, J. M. (2023) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055422000934 · Cited by 135 · see citing works
“Incongruent or unresponsive policy outcomes are signs of a “ democratic deficit ” (Caughey and Warshaw 2018; Lax and Phillips 2012).”
BackgroundExperimental effects of climate messages vary geographically
Zhang, B., van der Linden, S., Mildenberger, M., Marlon, J. R., Howe, P. D., & Leiserowitz, A. (2018) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0122-0 · Cited by 87 · see citing works
How Public Opinion Information Changes Politicians’ Opinions and Behavior
Sevenans, J. (2021) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-021-09715-9 · Cited by 69 · see citing works
Democratic Backsliding in the American States: The Case of Judicial Independence
Leonard, M. E. (2024) · Publius: The Journal of Federalism · doi:10.1093/publius/pjae009 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
- Authors
- Lax, J. R., & Phillips, J. H.
- Affiliations
- Columbia University (US)
- Venue
- American Journal of Political Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2011-09
- Volume
- 56
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 148-166
- ISSN
- 0092-5853 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-5907
- OpenAlex
- W2125174947
- Cited by
- 574
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 29 · 2025: 37 · 2024: 52 · 2023: 48 · 2022: 41 · 2021: 52 · 2020: 75 · 2019: 45 · 2018: 48 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 29 · 2015: 28 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 29 · 2012: 12
- FWCI
- 136.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Journal of Political Science (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Public Policy and Administration Research
- Keywords
- democratic deficit, public opinion, policy congruence, issue salience, term limits, partisanship, interest groups, policy polarization, state legislatures, abortion policy, law enforcement, health policy, education policy
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