themselves into competitive democracies, and, in their respective elections, the
erstwhile authoritarian party was voted out of oYce and peacefully surrendered
power. Note that in Mexico, the long-reigning PRI had allowed the PAN to
compete earlier, but did not allow free and open elections by virtue of restricting
opposition-party access to the media before the 2000 election. This changed in
2000 and the PAN candidate, Vicente Fox, was elected president, marking the full
democratic transition (see Aldrich, Magaloni, and Zechmeister 2005 ; Magaloni
2006 ).
Second, it could fairly be said that the central means of political representation is
the political party. To be sure, individuals can be agents of representation as well,
whether the chief executive or the individual legislator. But it is the political party
that most systematically and durably represents the public in government. But
representation is a relative thing, and as such it is a property of the party system,
even more than it is a property of an individual or a single party. Thus, the question
voters ask is not ‘‘how well does this party represent me, absolutely?’’ It is only
relative both to the agenda that comes before the assembly and relative to the
alternative or alternatives oVered. Thus, it is rather more helpful to think of
whether a member of party A voted (acted, spoke, etc.) more like any given
constituent than did a member of party B, C, and so on.
The US Congress is often seen as exceptional. It is special by virtue of the nearly
unique concatenation of having a two-party system with single-member districts
and no formal party discipline. A two-party system exaggerates the limited range
of feasible representation, compared to the more numerous choices faced in
multiparty systems. Of all the myriad combinations of policy choices (let alone
other matters of representation), the voters really have but two in front of them,
and they grow accustomed to trying to decide which is the better choice—or, often,
which is the ‘‘lesser of two evils.’’ This is shared with most other Anglo-American
democracies, among others (Lijphart 1984 , 1999 ; Chhibber and Kollman 2004 ).
Still, the range of choices is limited even in a multiparty system, and voters must
decide which of this range is the best available, rather than search for the absolute
best imaginable choice. The lack of formal party discipline means, on the one hand,
that a party chosen to be representative may be suYciently ineVective as to be able
to enact its platform. On the other hand, the individual representative is often best
understood, in the words of Gary Jacobson ( 2004 ), as responsive to the wishes of
their constituents, but not responsible for outcomes. Limited choice and limited
accountability tends to weaken if not undermine representation, perhaps uniquely
in the USA.
Two-party parliaments with high party discipline can be more accountable. They
are, however, just as limited to two eVective options to present to the public. In
some senses, the ability of the individual member of Congress to diVerentiate
herself from her party provides the voters with a stronger sense of the range of
feasible options in the USA than tends to be articulated in, say, England. But even
558 john h. aldrich