This paper examines two hypotheses. The first is that, as the workshop outline suggests, a decline in the output legitimacy of the political system arising from economic recession encourages talk about enhancing input legitimacy: specifically, about increasing the direct control that voters can exercise over the political system through electoral and direct democratic reforms. The second hypothesis, however, is that such talk rarely leads to anything more than symbolic action. As the authors’ previous work suggests, substantial change can be expected only in two circumstances: when it serves the perceived power interests of the politicians in power; or when the public at large are not only angered by the failure of policy outputs, but also convinced that specified political reforms will address the causes of that failure. The corollary of these two hypotheses is that populist reforms – reforms that appeal to anti-politician sentiments without offering the positive prospect of a system that functions better, such as reductions in the number of politicians – do not take place beyond a symbolic scale.
These hypotheses are tested through comparative analysis of recent reform debates in European countries. This analysis uses as its starting point two new databases: a database of reforms and reform debates developed through an expert survey conducted in 2012; and a detailed database of electoral reforms since 1945. It then supplements this general evidence through case studies of reform debates and processes in countries such as Iceland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania.
