Free Falls, High Dives, and the Future of Democratic Accountability

The health of democracy rests on the vigilance of its citizens, and democracy works best when citizens pay attention to the governing process. Different models of democracy envision different roles for citizens to fulfill, but every theory of democracy agrees that the most basic role of the citizen is to hold leaders accountable for what they have done or intend to do. Yet we know little about the conditions under which citizens are most likely to exercise such vigilance by going out and seeking political information. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that threats of various sorts can motivate people to gather information. It would seem that citizen interest in politics should be most acute when the political stakes are perceived as high, or when the risk of future harm is great. For example, citizen knowledge of politics over the latter half of the twentieth century hit an all-time high in the 1960s, presumably because of the social turmoil occurring during that decade. Likewise, the American public receives higher scores on political knowledge tests given during presidential election campaigns that it does during the midterm congressional elections, apparently because the highly visible presidential campaigns remind people how important it is to follow government affairs. If citizen engagement in politics goes up when the political environment generates reasons to be attentive, then democratic accountability might occur most efficiently during periods of social unrest or economic hardship, as the history of “critical realignments” in American elections suggests.