Jettisoning Illusions About the Median Mandate

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12175
• Author: Ian Budge,Michael D. McDonald,Robin E. Best
• Published date: 01 February 2018
• Date: 01 February 2018

ROBIN E. BEST

Binghamton University (SUNY)

IAN BUDGE

Essex University

MICHAEL D. McDONALD

Binghamton University (SUNY)

Jettisoning Illusions About the

Median Mandate

We endorse G. Bingham Powell’s cautionary corrective to challenge Paul War-

wick’s conclusions that the median mandate thesis needs to be jettisoned because there

is not a close match between median voter and government left-right positions. More to

the point, however, we go beyond Powell’s mild caution to challenge Warwick’s rejec-

tion more assertively and thoroughly. We show his rejection mistakes responsiveness

for congruence, misapprehends how and why the median mandate thesis distinguishes

between those two concepts, and fails to take account of a measurement artifact associ-

ated with his survey data.

The median mandate thesis offers a positive theory of democratic

governance through mass elections. Positive though it is, it has norma-

tive trappings because it takes the philosophy of democracy at its word

and analyzes governance by the standards set according to democracy’s

philosophical prescriptions. Most particularly, it says that electoral insti-

tutions, government formations, and policymaking usually end up

forging a “necessary correspondence between acts of government and

equally weighted felt interests of citizens with respect to those acts”

(Saward 1998, 51). Remarkably, despite worries about the perils to

democracy from uninformed voters (Brennan 2016; Somin 2013) and

despite the ineradicable possibility of incoherent collective decision

making through majority rule (Achen and Bartels 2016, 21–51; Arrow,

1963; McKelvey 1976; Schof‌ield 1978), the evidence used to confront

the median mandate thesis (McDonald and Budge 2005; McDonald,

Mendes, and Budge 2004), as extended and amended to specify alternat-

ing plurality parties as the animating mechanism (Budge et al. 2012),

reveals that under three nondemanding conditions, electoral democracy

delivers on its promise to forge the necessary correspondence. As long as

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 43, 1, February 2018 11

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12175

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