Free, competitive elections are supposed to encourage leaders to govern responsibly because voters can fire them if they do not. But the kind of accountability elections enforce depends on the structure of electoral politics. Where votes are cast to choose a governing party – and only incidently particular legislators, as in most parliamentary systems – enforcement of collective responsibility is unproblematic, and incentives for legislators to pursue successful national policies are unambiguous. Contests that revolve around local candidates and issues to the neglect of national parties and programs, like most present-day House elections, reward individual responsiveness at the expense of collective responsibility. They inspire far more sensitivity to the local implications of policies attacking national problems than to the national problems created by aggressive pursuit of local interests. A national legislature composed of people who believe that when it comes to elections, “all politics is local” naturally finds it difficult to act responsibly.

For this reason, any feature of congressional election politics that does enforce some degree of collective accountability deserves special attention.