Everybody knows that "the economy" matters in presidential elections, but how can one incorporate economic information in an early forecasting equation? Our economic forecasting tool is the cumulative growth of leading indicators during a presidential term--weighting recent growth most...

One little-noted requirement for the proper functioning of democratic institutions is public responsiveness to policy. A responsive public would adjust its preference for `more' or `less' policy in reaction to what policy-makers do. In this article we set out a theoretical model of how the...

Public responsiveness to government policy is a crucial component of representative democracy, but may be far weaker in federal regimes. This article explores the consequences of federalism for public responsiveness in one highly federalized policy domain: welfare spending in Canada. Results...