The Framers failed to anticipate universal suffrage and the American two-party system, let alone how these developments would change their system. Instead of letting Congress debate and decide policy, voters can now decide many issues directly. The chapter describes Americans grudging recognition that partisanship can lead to stable, responsible government. It then describes how 20th Century scholars developed rational voter models to formalize these ideas. It also asks how social voting, party leadership, identity politics, candidate charisma, and deep-pocketed donors change these results. Finally, it also argues that the existence of legislative deadlock lets comparatively small minorities take centrist compromises off the table. This forces the party system into presenting extreme choices that most voters oppose. The ensuing standoffs can last for years years and sometimes decades.

This chapter asks how voters react to political messaging and, crucially, sometimes change their minds. It begins by reviewing experimental psychology, neuroimaging, and artificial intelligence research showing that the brain reasons in two distinct ways: Recognizing patterns (fast or Type 1 thought) and constructing logical arguments (slow or type 2 thought). It then argues that the first mode almost always dominates political thought. The paradox is that humans have evolved to feel pleasure both in confirming old patterns and in being surprised by new ones. This means that while political messaging is often repetive, humans are also susceptible to messages that feature large departures from current orthodoxies. Because of majority rule, politicians will normally prefer messages that appeal to large numbers of voters. This explains how even highly-polarized electorates can sometimes realign around new issues to restore a more centrist politics.

This chapter reviews the Framers basic design principles, including separation of powers, federalism, and a frank recognition that all governments are and must be coercive.  It then presents a simple baseline for describing voter (un-)happiness with whatever policies the government adopts. The chapter ends with a detailed roadmap of succeeding chapters.

After independence, Mozambique relied on international solidarity and managed donor relations well. Donor dependency entailed loss of agency, allowing donors to challenge government capacity but never its authority. During the 2010s, donors expressed disappointment with reforms and challenged government legitimacy — not only due to developments in Mozambique. Donors are less enthusiastic about harmonised development cooperation and less concerned with aid effectiveness. Aid budgets are under pressure and development finance links more to other foreign policy concerns. Mozambique should expect increasing instrumentalisation of aid budgets. Institutions Mozambique developed to deal with donors are not well suited to present challenges. They focus on less relevant areas of the relationship with foreign countries, which often serve other agendas. Reforms could start with strengthening Mozambique’s Foreign Service as a genuine coordinator of foreign relations and the establishment of greater discipline around national plans and strategies. Institutionalising strong links between the foreign ministry and key economic ministries under the leadership of the prime minister could help.

This chapter provides a detailed account of the historical, political, and economic context of Mozambique. We draw attention to the big picture story and argue that the post-independence socio-economic performance and patterns of change cannot be understood without reference to the troubled history of the country. We identify fourteen core messages to keep in mind throughout the volume. They lead to selecting eight thematic areas for further study in Chapters 4 to 11.

How do organized interests contribute to unequal representation in contemporary democracies? We discuss two central channels: the selection of partisan legislators through elections and postelectoral influence via lobbying. We argue that these channels are potentially complementary strategies used by rational actors. Employing a game-theoretic model and simulations of interest group influence on legislative voting, we show that this logic may explain interest group strategies in unequal times. Our model implies that interest group strategies vary with party polarization and it highlights a challenge for empirical research on unequal representation and the literature on lobbying. Using statistical models commonly used in the literature to study biases in legislative voting or policy adoption, researchers are likely to overstate the relevance of elections as a channel through which groups affect legislative responsiveness and understate the role interest groups’ postelectoral influence. Our results stress the importance of theoretical models capturing the strategic behavior of political actors as a guiding light for the empirical study of mechanisms of unequal representation.

This chapter starts by reviewing the history of American news media since 1789, focusing on how new production technologies and business models led to a comparatively unbiased, objective journalism in the mid-20th Century. The difference today that audiences have become far more polarized. This has enabled market segmentation strategies in which each broadcaster avoid competition by pandering to a different political viewpoint. More recently, the rise of the Web has accelerated the rate at which new political messages can be invented, tested on audiences, and eventually refined to the point where mainstream outlets are prepared to broadcast it. The question remains how effectively large news organizations and Web platforms can suppress information they disagree with. The chapter explores when and to what extent todays markets permit this.

This synthesis aims to put together the different threads pursued throughout this volume and presents our institutional diagnostic. We note as point of departure that Frelimo’s continuing inability to promote agriculture and broad-based private sector growth helps explain why the country lacks a consistent domestic engine of inclusive growth. We also return to the fork in the road. Remaining on the present path would lead to increasing inequality, further regional imbalances, and possibly armed conflict. The alternative is to use the expected gas revenues effectively for poverty reduction. Political power and authority continue to be almost exclusively vested in Frelimo. This stands out as a deep factor in our diagnostic. It takes visionary and brave leaders to take on the necessary reforms. to put the country back on a favourable trend. The uniting capabilities that Frelimo at least once possessed are exactly what is needed now. While one may argue that changes identified here are not necessary for Frelimo’s hold on power, the implications of increasing inequality, fragmentation, and conflict, serve as a strong warning sign and incentive to act in the national interest.