Overall, the evidence presented in this chapter suggests that policy-making powers are likely to affect the degree to which policy positions reflect the moods of policy-makers in charge of bringing them about (congruence), but that they are less predictive of the way in which policies change in response to changes in the moods of policy-makers (responsiveness). When they are found to be predictive, PMPs seem to generate a trade-off between the ability to effectively move policy to a position that is more consistent with the preferences of both presidents and legislators, on the one hand, and the ability to adequately represent a variety of interests in the legislature, on the other. The first objective is more likely to be attained when PMPs clearly favor the executive. The latter objective is better achieved when powers are relatively matched across branches. Either through PMPs that give executives an upper hand or through an ability to respond to annually evolving policy orientations, executives seem to hold more sway over the direction of policy than legislators – a fact that is consistent with the relative levels of responsiveness we find in simulation.

In this chapter, we consider the connection between citizens and policies, accounting for all the intermediate linkages that form the full chain of representation. In general, while we find that median and distribution-aware congruences are higher whenever PMPs empower legislatures, such PMPs make it harder for policy to accurately track the movements of citizen moods over time. In turn, while executive-empowering PMPs make it easy for policy to respond to changes in citizen moods (particularly when legislatures are elected under restrictive rules, and presidents are elected under permissive rules), this increased ability comes at the expense of accurately reflecting the preferences of citizens in terms of proximity. We also find, as we did in the previous chapter, that, even where congruence is low, responsiveness can remain high. In other words, citizens’ moods can be reflected in the direction that policy is moving even when that policy remains somewhat distant from what most citizens would prefer.