Leading approaches in empirical democratic theory analyse types of democracy as combinations of institutions and behaviour patterns and argue that the responsiveness of a democracy to the citizens’ preferences varies with the type of democracy. However, current approaches in empirical democratic theory contradict each other on how the type of democracy influences patterns of behaviour and democratic responsiveness: While Lijphart (1999) argues that oversized majorities promote consensual behaviour and government’s responsiveness to the citizens’ preferences, others argue that majority rule in legislative decision-making advances consensual behaviour and democratic responsiveness (McGann 2006, Ganghof 2005).
Data on legislative processes of Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria (all German Länder) however demonstrate that none of these approaches suits to explain patterns of behaviour identified in the parliaments of the Länder. In my conference contribution I build on social choice and game theory to criticize these approaches and to argue that they dismiss the strategies of parties and party members in policy-making. Thus, they fail to explain how distinct patterns of behaviour evolved and influenced democratic responsiveness. To assess how the goals of parties and party members influenced their behaviour in policy-making, I therefore analyse in my conference contribution how parties and party members employed available powers to realize their policy-, office- and vote-related goals in policy-making. More precisely I analyse the empirical relevance of models varying in assumptions on actors’ goals and the level of abstraction. The models result in competing implications whether groups of legislators co-operate in policy-making. The relative empirical relevance of competing implications is assessed in a systematic process tracing analysing legislators’ behaviour on an aggregated level. Relevant information is collected from parliamentary databases for a time span of three/four legislative periods. Empirical results suggest that party members in the three Länder developed distinct strategies and that strategic interactions promoted distinct patterns of behaviour. The paper therefore concludes that empirical democratic theory could gain considerably from paying closer attention to the strategies of parties and party members in policy-making and resulting strategic interactions.
