Temporal Consistency and Policy Credibility: Why Democracies Need Non-Majoritarian Institutions

As Juan Linz has recently argued, many problem of democratic government would be difficult to understand without including the time dimension in our analysis of the democratic process. This is because government pro tempore is an essential and defining characteristic of democratic governance (Linz, 1995). The time limit inherent in the requirement of elections at regular intervals is a powerful constraint on the arbitrary use by the winners of the electoral contest of the powers granted to them by the voters. At the same time, the fact that those defeated in the elections can look forward to victory at the next elections, a few years hence, is an essential incentive to stay in the democratic game (Przeworski, 1991).