ABSTRACT
Elected representatives can only retain the support of citizens if they supply the public policies desired by the latter. Each characteristic of the institutional framework separately and in combination makes it possible for politicians to neglect, for a time at least, the preferences of some citizens at no cost to themselves, that is without thereby necessarily jeopardizing their own position as politicians. This property of the institutional framework in turn affects the way citizens behave vis-a-vis politicians and political parties. In practice one also finds a large number of rules of proportional representation whereby the number of elected representatives tends to be roughly divided in proportion to the number of votes a party receives. Empirical research should, however, eventually tell us the rate of substitution that exists between decision-rules, length of election periods, and full-line supply as these influence the freedom of politicians and the incentive of citizens.
