Needs/Wants Dichotomy and Regime Responsiveness

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NEEDS/WANTS DICHOTOMY AND REGIME RESPONSIVENESS

Alexander Korolev1

This is a working draft. The final version of this paper has been published as:

Alexander Korolev, “Needs/Wants Dichotomy and Regime Responsiveness,” Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, (2015), Vol. 27 Issue 1, pp. 23-48

ABSTRACT One of the central claims of democratic theory is that democracy, due to its specific institutional features, systematically causes government responsiveness to the people. Responsiveness is a desirable outcome of democracy. Governments, however, can respond in different ways. Their policies can either be targeted at public wants and demands, or at some conception of need. This paper, using an interdisciplinary approach, attempts to enhance the understanding of democracy’s impact on what people can actually get from their governments by developing a twofold concept of state responsiveness consisting of responsiveness to wants and responsiveness to needs that can be useful for future research on the issue. It is also argued that if a government responds to people’s objective needs the choices the decision-makers make change substantially, compared to when a government responds to people’s subjective wants. Democratic institutions can make government responsive to articulated public wants but can not guarantee, and may even hamper, responsiveness to basic human needs. Democracy, therefore, is mainly for the sphere of wants, rather than needs.

Keywords: regime responsiveness, needs, wants, democracy, accountability

Introduction

Responsiveness has been recognized as an intrinsic attribute of democratic government. Dahl

(1971, 1-2) argued that “a key characteristic of democracy is the continuing responsiveness of

the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals,” and that “the

term ‘democracy’ should be reserved for a political system one of the characteristics of which is

the quality of being completely or almost completely responsive to all its citizens”.

Responsiveness, it was argued, “is what democracy is supposed to be about” (Verba and Nie

1972, 300). Responsiveness has also been considered to be prior to the problem of

accountability, because people first have to know whether a government has been responsive

before they can think to hold it accountable (Hardin 2000, 113). Even though a fully responsive

system does not actually exist and all practical institutional arrangements are only imperfect

approximations of it, it can serve as an ideal model – as a “basis for estimating the degree to

1 Alexander Korolev, [email protected], Research Fellow, Center on Asia and Globalisation, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, 469 C Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259772, Singapore, thanks Jeffrey Friedman for comments on earlier draft.

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which various systems approach this theoretical limit” (Dahl 1971, 2). Responsiveness is thus

seen as a yardstick for evaluating how “democratic” governments are; as something central to

democratic theory and practice.

Responsiveness can be understood as a manner of government action – what a

government does in carrying out its policy tasks. In other words, the term deals with activities of

the governors, with their behaviour, instead of the characteristics of the governors or the ways

they are elected. At the same time, responsiveness implies relationship between the government

and the governed: it takes place in response to the impulses coming from the governed to the

government. As Almond and Powell (1966, 201) put it, “while extractive, regulative,

distributive, and symbolic capabilities are ways of describing the pattern of output of the

political system into the internal and external environment, the responsive capability is a

relationship between inputs and outputs.” Finally, responsiveness is a government activity for

which government can be held to account. It is patterned on the accountability mechanisms,

which provide for the ruled to have power over the rulers. The more complete the accountability

is the more perfect responsiveness is expected to be. Responsiveness, in sum, can be described

as government activity which is undertaken in response to certain signals coming from the

public and which causally depends on accountability mechanisms available to the public.

In the existing empirical literature, the dominant view of responsiveness assumes that a

responsive government is a government which responds to public wants and preferences by

mirroring public opinion (Page 1994; Wlezien 1995; Manza and Cook 2002; Burstein 2003;

Bingham 2004; Soroka and Wlezien 2005; Brooks and Manza 2006). The primary meaning of

democratic responsiveness, therefore, is giving people what they want. Responsiveness to wants

is considered a central concern of various normative and empirical theories of democracy (Page

and Shapiro 1983). It has also been seen as one of the justifications for democracy itself,

because high-quality democracy is sustained when “the direct elections of powerful, promise-

keeping governments that are publicly committed to policies the citizens want” (Bingham 2004,

92, emphasis added) take place.

In democracies, those who rule are responsive to people’s wants because they, as elected

officials, can be held accountable through the simple mechanism of eviction from office –

people’s vote; the price of nonresponsiveness will be defeat in the next elections (Arnold 1990;

Dahl 1961; Downs 1957; Gillens 2005; Mayhew 1974). The positive causal role of electoral

competition in generating responsiveness to wants is confirmed by abundant evidence of

substantial empirical correlation between what public wants and public policy output in the

United States and elsewhere (Bingham 2004; Brooks and Manza 2006; Burstein 2003; Manza

and Cook 2002; Page 1994; Page and Shapiro 1983; Soroka and Wlezien 2005; Wlezien 1995).

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The gist of all these works is the assumption that the key meaning of responsiveness is

giving people what they want and demand. Admittedly, there are those who warn against

reducing the concept of responsiveness to wants satisfaction, arguing that looking to brute

public opinion makes responsiveness entirely a function of subjective preferences of the

electorate at a given moment and that this tends to reduce the notion of responsiveness to the

opportunistic effort to mirror the poll day to day (Hardin 2000). However, methodical studies

which would attempt to conceptually separate objective needs from subjective wants and

include the concept of human need into analysis of state responsiveness are absent.

What does the difference between public wants and needs, as targets of government

policies, bring into the politics of the relationship between the government and the governed?

Will the currently dominant system of hypothesis and assumptions regarding democratic

responsiveness still hold if objective public needs are included into political analysis? Are

modern democratic institutions conducive to both responsiveness to wants and responsiveness to

needs, or is democracy mainly for the sphere of wants, rather than needs? Do competitive

elections hinder/foster regime responsiveness to objective public needs? 1

To answer these questions this paper is divided into three parts. Part 1, drawing on the

theories of human needs, develops a “needs-wants dichotomy” – a set of differences between

needs and wants. It thus conceptually divorces needs and wants as hypothetical targets of public

policy making. Part 2 explores the implications of needs-wants distinctions for the concept of

state responsiveness and outlines the key characteristics of “responsiveness to wants” and

“responsiveness to needs” in terms of the relationship between citizens and politicians. Part 3

draws preliminary conclusions regarding the ability of democratic institutions to cause

government responsiveness to objective needs. It is demonstrated, at the conceptual level, that

democracy is mainly for the sphere of wants rather than needs, and that the incentive structure

imposed on politicians by democratic institutions may fail to cause government responsiveness

to needs. It is also suggested how policies responsive to needs can be possible.

1. People’s “needs” vs. people’s “wants” as targets of policy making

Needs are often envisaged as grounded in human nature and derived from the characteristics of

the human organism. Many theorists make the conceptual connection between basic needs

satisfaction and the avoidance of harm (Frankfurt 1998; Copp 1998; Wiggins 1998; Nussbaum

1998; Braybrooke 1987; Doyal & Gough 1991). The satisfaction of needs is seen as a necessary

condition for avoidance of serious human harm. If needs are not satisfied, then serious harm or

“pathology” (Bay 1968) of some specified and objective kind which is outside the person’s

voluntary control will result. Braybrooke (1987, 48), for instance, as a key criterion of needs

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takes the fact that needs are “indispensable to mind or body in performing the tasks assigned a

given person under a combination of basic social roles, namely, the roles of parent, householder,

worker and citizen” and that “if what is thus indispensable is not supplied, the person’s

functioning in those tasks is deranged.”2

Wants, in contrast to needs, when left unmet do not cause serious harm. Maslow (1954,

57) argued, for instance, that the thwarting of unimportant desires produces no pathological

results, whereas thwarting of basically important needs does produce such results. Macpherson

(1977, 27), when analyzing the categories of the common current English usage of words needs

and wants, noticed that needs expressed “the things absolutely necessary to sustain human life,

wants are for things gratifying but not necessary: at one extreme, food and air; at the other,

yachts and champagne.” Admittedly, it is accepted that the deprivation of human wants can

produce conflicts, but such conflicts do not under normal circumstances results in serious

pathologies, frustration or harm (Renshon 1977, 63).

The groundedness in human nature and the “harm connection” (Frankfurt 1998, 23) is a

common denominator of the majority of need theories which makes the notion of needs different

from wants and bound it to the idea of “the necessary, the essential, the indispensable or the

inescapable” (Brock 1998, 15). Also, it gives the concept of needs the status of universality and

objectivity. As Doyal and Gough (1991, 49) put it:

“There is something objective and universal about human needs: ‘objective’ in that its

theoretical and empirical specification is independent of individual preference and ‘universal’ in

that its conception of serious harm is the same for everyone.”

The distinctions between needs and wants can be established by such oft-cited examples

as: “I want a cigarette, but I need to stop smoking,” or by many examples when what young

children must have or need differ dramatically from what they demonstrably want. Quite often,

as clinical psychology and social work have demonstrated, the same situations can be true for

adults. Some studies in welfare research have also argued that in most settings the relationship

between objective conditions and subjective attitudes or perceptions is surprisingly weak

(Allardt 1993, 92). Needs are thus different from wants, and the two can exist separately from

each other. They may have different relations with social and political reality and imply

different political logic for their satisfaction.

Public wants and needs can be differentiated in a number of ways and from different

perspectives. This analysis highlights those differences which have direct implications to public

policy making and to the concept of state responsiveness. Those relevant differences are: 1)

needs/wants observability; 2) their variability; 3) malleability; 4) satisfaction criteria. The first

difference deals with the information asymmetry issue and principals’ (voters) capacity to detect

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and see the objective needs and to formulate demands accordingly. The third one touches upon

the implications of the agent’s (government) purposive activity aimed at shaping public opinion.

The second and fourth reflect the nature of public needs and wants. Changes of public policy

targets along these four dimensions significantly transform the incentive structure within which

decision makers operate.

Observability

Observability is the level of visibility of certain issues. Observable issues lie on the surface and

do not require uncovering, whereas unobservable ones first need to be detected before they can

be addressed. People’s wants, especially when politically activated as public demands, represent

observable external outputs of a societal entity, whereas needs, to enter public discourse, need to

be discovered by the people.

Wants, unlike needs, are easy to establish empirically “for to say ‘I want’ is merely to

state that it is a fact that ‘I want,’ and one’s overt expressions are sufficient to establish in a

positive way what one wants” (Meyer 1974, 203). Therefore, wants, desires and demands can be

ascertained by asking people or directly observing their behaviour (Fitzgerald 1977, xv). Wants

are seen as “any demonstrable predisposition to desire or prefer something, whether expressed

in words or by nonverbal behaviour” (Bay 1977, 2). Needs, in turn, being understood as some

necessary requirements for life, health or basic freedom of the living persons, may not be really

visible, except at the lower extreme of “dire needs” (Bay 1980, 293-318). This means that needs

can fail to become demands for government policies unless they are unsatisfied to the extent

when serious harm is felt. This means that firm knowledge of needs may not be achieved from

the perceived wants.

In light of utilitarian thinking, “Every man constitutes himself the judge of utility for

himself” (Bentham 1972, 446). Consequently, it is argued that “the only intelligible statement is

one that is purely empirical – that is, all we can say about what people need is what they claim

they need, what they want” (Meyer 1974, 200). However, the issue is complicated by the

character of the relationship between needs and wants which makes correct inferences of the

former form the latter problematic under some circumstances. People may want what they do

not really need, and need what they do not want. Therefore, it is not always possible to say from

the individual point of view what is a need and what is not (Springborg 1977, 158).

Wants are defined as perceived or felt needs which may or may not correspond to or

overlap with real needs (Bay 1968, 1970). Under the circumstances of strong alienation, for

instance, people’s wants may be poorly matched with needs (Bay 1977, 7). As Doyal and Gough

(1991) argue, needs are to be differentiated from wants and subjective preferences in terms of

their possibly unconscious status. That is to say, while people know what they want or desire,

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they may not know what they really need (Fitzgerald 1985, 89). Being unaware of their needs,

people may be incapable of defining them. As a consequence, the satisfaction of needs might not

be pursued for the lack of knowledge, not for the lack of necessity.

In summary, the relationship between wants and needs may be that of congruence – in

this case people want what they need, and any activity aimed at satisfaction of wants will

automatically satisfy needs as well (at least partly). Also, there may be needs people do not want,

just because they are not aware of them, or for other psychological and social reasons. In this

case, any activity aimed at the satisfaction of wants will not satisfy needs. Finally, wanted items

may be in contradiction with needed items; in this case people want what they do not need. In

such situation, satisfaction of wants may hinder the satisfaction of needs.

Figure 1: Visibility of Needs and Wants

The direct implications of people’s capacity to know their needs for the relationship

between the governing and the governed are important. We cannot know needs by observing

wants which means that wants are not always the best proxies for needs. As Fitzgerald (1977, xv)

puts it, “wants are sometimes manifestations of real needs but we cannot always infer the

existence of needs from wants,” or, rephrasing Meyer (1974, 203), we can begin to speak of

needs only to the extent that wants become the subject of judgment, evaluation or purposeful

change. The implication of this needs/wants characteristic is that to motivate politicians to

respond to “needs,” people have to be able to know those latent needs and to transform them

into demands, and to demand policies accordingly.

Variability

Needs and wants can also be distinguished in terms of variability or changeability. Since human

needs are grounded in human nature, whereas wants are subjective preferences of individuals, it

can be hypothesized that needs and wants change with different speeds. Wants and preferences

Wants

Needs

Visible overlap

zone

Invisible needs

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change fast, whereas needs are less changeable and change slowly. Relevant arguments can be

found in the human needs literature. Fitzgerald (1977, xv), for instance, argued that basic human

needs, being characteristic of human nature, are less subject to change than the social or even

physical conditions under which men live. Max-Neef (1991) defines needs as finite and

classifiable; constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods, whereas

wants can be changeable, infinite and insatiable. Doyal and Gough (1991, 4) also argued that

human needs are “universal and knowable, but our knowledge of them, and of the satisfiers

necessary to meet them, is dynamic and open-ended.” In other words, needs change slowly,

whereas wants change fast.

An empirical example can confirm the point that wants and needs change with different

speeds and in different directions. It suffices to look at the situation around healthcare reform in

the United States. Fluctuations in what people think about health care, and therefore what they

want from the government, tend to be unrelated to the real changes in the healthcare sector.

Between June 2009 and January 2010, 10% of the American public withdrew their

support from leading Congressional proposal. Thus, in June 2009, 50% were in favor vs. 45%

opposed, but in January 2010, support had dropped to 40% and opposition had increased to 55%.

In February 2010, Gallup found a new low of 36% approval for President Obama’s healthcare.

(Gallup, Feb 8, 2010). Finally, a new Gallup poll released in January 2011 found that 46% of

Americans want their representative in Congress to vote to repeal the healthcare law, 40% want

their representative to vote to let the law stand, and 14% have no opinion (Gallup, Jan 7, 2011).

A country’s healthcare system is highly unlikely to change dramatically every month.

Therefore, the fluctuation in public preferences regarding healthcare reform is weakly related to

the real state of affairs in the healthcare sector. The point that needs and wants change at

different speeds can be envisaged as two lines – one representing the objectively needed items,

remains almost unchanged, whereas the other one, representing wanted items, deviates from the

first line chaotically being influenced by a number of factors.

Figure 2: Variability of Needs and Wants2

2 The deviation here has nothing to do with the fluctuations of public opinion on healthcare issues in the US. This figure is just an abstract visualization of the fact then wants may tend to change faster than needs.

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It is not within the scope of this part to discover those numerous forces which make people’s

wants fluctuate and change faster than people’s needs. What is important here is to demonstrate

that activities aimed at satisfaction of wants may have different time perspective in comparison

with those aimed at needs satisfaction.

Malleability

To distinguish needs and wants in terms of malleability is to argue that the extent to which they

are subject to the influence of external forces are different. In other words, their amenability to

changes in socio-political conditions is not the same. Nussbaum (1998, 143) points out that the

fact that wants and desires are malleable and unreliable and can hardly be ‘a guide to the human

good’ was emphasized by Aristotle. The theory of human need (Doyal and Gough 1991) argues

that wants are goals which derive from an individual’s particular preferences and cultural

environment and that basic needs must be conceptualized independently of any specific social

environment

In the political philosophy literature the point that wants are more malleable than needs

is made with more normative stance. Wants, it is argued, are often artificially induced by outside

manipulation (Fitzgerald 1977, xv). Marcuse (1964, 4-9), who distinguishes between “true” and

“false” needs, argues that “all what is seen or felt by most people to be their needs, beyond

biological necessities, tends to be primarily determined by the predominant interest in a given

society, and, therefore, is an aspect of political domination.” Bay (1977, 3) argues that “an

ostensible democratic order responding mainly to the more salient among the induced wants

(false needs) of corporate ideology-programmed individuals is hardly a democratic society in

fact” and that “a prerequisite for achieving democracy in any real sense is an end to prevalence

of externally imposed needs and self-perceptions.” He also argues that the structures of

Time Span

Urg

ency

High

Low

Need for certain items Want for the same items

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domination dissolve people’s perceived need-structures into response-sets that serve the short-

term requirements of corporate interests (Bay 1977, 6-7). To achieve emancipation, a basic need

structure must be recovered, at least conceptually, from the weight of external domination.

Similar lines of reasoning can be traced in feminist literature and social choice theory

which argue that people’s wants and desires can largely be formed by the circumstances and

options they perceive as being open to them. Thus, it is said for example that despite the fact

that in some societies the options open to women are fewer than those open to men, women used

to adjust their desires to what they can realistically expect. Therefore, examining the actual

desires of women may lead to the conclusion that women on the whole get what they want

(Annas 1993, 282).

The issue of the malleability of wants and its implications can also be traced in the

systems theory which argues that ‘what people demand may derive from wants, opinion,

preferences or interest bred within the political system itself’ (Easton 1965, 54, emphasis added).

Persons acting in and stimulated by their roles in any environmental system may be led to

demand decisions of some sort. That is to say, independent variations of different parameters of

the political system will influence the input of demands. Moreover, through feedback response

political outputs may influence systemic variables and thereby shape the inputs themselves

(Easton 1965, 54).

Empirical examples are easy to find. Substantial evidence exists on the relative

malleability of public opinion. For instance, many empirical studies have established firm

correlations between what media says and public priorities. Media can directly influence and

shape public preferences (Shapiro and Jacobs 1989; Jacobs and Shapiro 2000). Interest groups

can also easily distract people’s attention from some issues while emphasizing others. Moreover,

in some complex economic matters, such as the effects of taxes and spending on redistribution

and the effects of public-funded healthcare versus private-oriented systems, public is relatively

easy to manipulate or deceive (Shapiro and Young 1989).

Another example of the fact that public wants can be divorced from needs is found in

post-revolutionary China in the 1950s and 1960s, where, according to the dictum “first

production, then living,” living was a personal interest, whereas the public interest was to

accumulate wealth for the nation. Some authors document that in the first two decades after the

Chinese Communist Revolution there was a severe housing shortage in the PRC. Housing needs

were great, but surprisingly, these needs did not get transferred into housing demand (Zhang

1997). According to Zhang, little demand for housing under the condition of severe shortage of

accommodation “could only be explained by the spiritual magic created by Mao Zedong”

(Zhang 1997, 442) which generated a situation in which spiritual satisfaction in the process of

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socialist construction overwhelmed personal physical needs. In such a situation, any analysis of

public wants and demands is likely to mislead the understanding of the actual housing situation,

because, in terms of people’s satisfaction, housing problem was nonexistent although there was

a severe housing shortage. People’s needs did not transform into demands.

In summary, wants and preferences are malleable and can be shaped by the socio-

political environment, by public media, interest groups, government or other influential factors

and actors. Needs, in contrast, are objective and universal and, thus, independent of any specific

environmental forces and cannot be changed unless satisfied. Therefore, the emergence of

public demands of policies aimed at the satisfaction of objective needs implies the ability of the

general public to discover their objective needs and the ability of a decision-making unit to

control and direct its own attention and to be able to sort out some imposed wants from true

needs.

Satisfaction criteria

Due to the above considered differences, needs and wants may have different criteria of

satisfaction. First, the content of satisfaction will be different. In case of wants, there is a place

for symbolic satisfaction. To create impression that something is being done, even if the

substantive content of demands is not met, will often suffices to avert people’s discontent. In the

case of needs, however, image-making is irrelevant and satisfaction will inevitably require

dealing with the existing problems successfully. Second, the criteria of meeting wants differ

from criteria of meeting needs. In the case of wants, the satisfaction will be aggregative and will

tend to follow the Pareto Welfare Principle, that is, satisfaction of more people’s preferences

should not run counter to the preferences of anybody. In the case of needs, however, satisfaction

is understood in terms of averages and requires getting better overall scores, even if at the

expense of above-needs provision for some groups.

Relating to the first difference, political outputs can meet the existing demands of the

members of a system in two ways: first, they may modify environmental or intrasystem

conditions so that the original circumstances that gave rise to the demands no longer exist;

second, however, political authorities may take steps to create the impression that demands are

being met in people’s minds, even though in fact nothing other than the image has been changed.

That is to say, the people’s perception that something is being done on their behalf and in

response to their demands will be enough for the want-satisfaction policies. Thus, the authorities

are able to maintain public support even if no actual satisfaction efforts are made. Easton (1965,

433) argues that for the output to have a desirable impact on the system the substantive content

of the demand does not always need to be met:

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“…even though some outputs may not succeed in meeting demands, knowledge that

efforts have been made on behalf of producers of inputs and that they are not being

neglected or ignored will, in itself, help to reduce frustrations and discontent and

thereby either prevent the withdrawal of support or positively stimulate it. In this

sense, even unsuccessful efforts to match outputs to wants and demands may be

interpreted as a form of responsiveness….For the authorities, to have tried and failed

is better than not to have tried at all, as long as the members so perceive the

situation.”

In case of satisfaction of needs, however, there is no place for symbolic satisfaction.

Satisfaction of needs implies tangible satisfaction demonstrated by a system of objective

indicators.

Relating to the second difference, the satisfaction of wants is aggregative whereas needs

are satisfied in terms of averages. Because the profile of the population’s needs in a country is

objective (independent of individual preference) and basic needs are universal (same for

everyone)3, the purpose of needs-satisfaction activities is to get better overall scores

(Braybrooke 1998, 70). Such a purpose implies the notion of a floor or a threshold, which

implies a different policy-making philosophy. As Nussbaum (1998, 152, emphasis added) puts it,

“the focus is always on getting more to cross the threshold rather than further enhancing the

conditions of those who have already crossed it.” Moreover, once a person has crossed the

threshold, more is not necessary better. Thus, needs-satisfaction implies such activity, which

may reduce for some people provision over and above what they require to meet their needs,

despite the fact that they might prefer to maintain these provisions (Braybrooke 1998, 60). This

is what Braybrooke (1998, 61) calls the “Principle of Precedence” which overrides Pareto

Welfare Principle:

“The Principle of Precedence will call for advances in provision up and down the

List of Matters of Need, and continue to call for them, falling silent only when for

all the people in the Reference Population all the Matters of Need on the list have

been met at the Minimum Standards of Provision. This goal is thus treated as a

lexicographical priority, strictly speaking, a priority that is lexicographical only up

to a satiation limit that is the conjunction of the satiation limits for all the Matters of

Need. The goal is the conjunction; the conjuncts are the Minimum Standard of

Provision (a range of minima, varying from person to person, for each Matter of

Need).”

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Marcuse (1964, 6), when talking about needs-satisfaction, also invokes to the notion of

“standards of priority”, by arguing that needs satisfaction “...involves standards of priority –

which refers to the optimal development of the individual, of all individuals, under the optimal

utilization of the material and intellectual resources available to man.” Bay in his analysis,

analogically, uses the notion of “universalistic priorities”, arguing that satisfaction of human

needs in a given society should be done according to some universalistic scheme of priorities,

implicit or explicit (Bay 1977). Such “priorities”, in turn, are seen as “norms for guiding the

choice between conflicting needs” (Fitzgerald 1985, 97). The satisfaction of needs implies the

existence of some minimum standard of provision for every person in the reference population

on every matter of need. Thus, until such minimum standard of provision of every matter of

need has been achieved, “matters of preference only may be called on to give way in

everybody’s case” (Braybrooke 1998, 61).

In summary, if want-satisfaction sometimes may be an activity permitting for imitation

and image-making and aimed at satisfaction of wants of a part of the population (politically

active part, which is able to transform their wants into demands and, thus, make them visible),

need-satisfaction always implies tangible satisfaction according to a certain floor, threshold,

standard of priority etc, based on all people in the reference population.

Needs/wants Dichotomy and Regime Responsiveness

It is supposed that through the mechanism of competitive elections the principals can hold the

agents accountable and thus make them implement desired policies. But are politicians

controlled by citizens through elections, as perfect agency assumes, in case of needs? What

implications do different degrees of observability, variability, malleability, and different criteria

of satisfaction have for democratic accountability mechanisms? Can citizens unmistakably

reward high levels of needs satisfaction? If in the case of needs a breakdown of accountability

takes place, the incentives of a government to be responsive to citizens’ needs are eroded.

In light of the above elaborated differences between needs and wants, responsiveness to

needs and responsiveness to wants will differ from each other in a number of ways. Such

needs/wants characteristics as visibility, variability, amenability and different satisfaction

criteria have various conceptual implications for state responsiveness in terms of policy

purposes, process, results and results-evaluation. Those characteristics are not mutually

exclusive. To make the conceptual implications clearer, however, each of them will be

considered separately.

Observability and the issue of information asymmetry

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According to the competitive theory of democracy, what links competition to the policy outputs

is an assumption that election-seeking politicians are expected to keep real or imagined

preferences of constituents constantly in mind in deciding what policies to adopt and reject

(Dahl 1961, 164). Accountability mechanisms start being effective when people can reward

politicians with reelection, or punish them with defeat. However, for such an accountability

mechanism to work and for responsiveness to needs to become a by-product of a competitive

method of leadership recruitment, the electorate has to be able to observe existing needs and

formulate unified demands accordingly; they also have to be able to assign responsibility for

changes (positive or negative) of the levels of needs satisfaction correctly. Taking into account

the differences between needs and wants and the complexity of the relationship between them,

citizens may fail to judge politicians’ performance in terms of needs-satisfaction.

The issue is complicated by the fact that people’s ability to articulate wants and needs

depends on their social status and level of income. As some argue, despite the fact that it may

appear very democratic to base the indicators of socio-economic conditions on people’s own

opinions and attitudes, there is a great variation in the ability to articulate both satisfaction and

discomfort, and that underprivileged people are usually less able to articulate their misgivings

than others. Therefore, “to base the choice of welfare criteria entirely on people’s subjective

views is likely to lead to an ‘unfruitful conservatism’” (Allardt 1993, 92). Since the ability to

articulate misgivings differ among people, in case of responsiveness to wants, preferences or

demands, the relevant Reference Population4 may be different. Those who can make their voice

heard are already well-off with their needs basically satisfied. Thus, when government responds

to public opinion and revealed demands, it automatically satisfies the wants of the well-off,

instead of the needs of the worse-off. Indeed, as Verba and Nie (1972, 299-318) have

demonstrated empirically, political leaders in the United States tend to respond to the

preferences of the activist population – “the participants” who have time and resources to

transform their wants into demands, but who are only a small and unrepresentative part of the

citizenry: they are of upper social status, male, white and middle-aged. Some other empirical

studies have also demonstrated that the least educated voters often have the least capacity to

assess the quality of public services. In Mexico, for instance, 85 percent of parents are satisfied

with their children’s schools largely because their children had much better access than they

themselves did (Navarro 2005, 11, quoted in Nelson 2007, 83). That is to say, in the case of

responsiveness to wants and demands, the problems which come to command the attention and

concern of authoritative decision makers comes from the most active and better-off segments of

population.

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On the agents side the situation is different. Government leaders are likely to know the

population’s needs. Life conditions of the poor and objective quality of public services are well

known to the government, at least to one which has capacity to collect and process information

on basic population indicators. However, politicians concerned about reelection tend to listen to

public opinion when taking policy initiatives. As Stimson, MacKuen, and Erikson vividly put it,

“politicians are keen to pick up the faintest signals in their political environment. Like antelope

in an open field, they cock their ears and focus their full attention on the slightest sign of

danger” (Stimson, MacKuen, & Erikson 1995, 559). To stay in power governments are

motivated to reflect in their policy initiatives the preferences and demands of voters. If the

“faintest signals” or “signs of danger” do not transmit information regarding basic needs, the

incentives for the agents to take the principal’s needs seriously are undermined.

From the perspective of agency theory and democratic accountability, the greater

information asymmetry and the fact that the upper classes are better articulators of both

satisfaction and discomfort make state responsiveness to needs politically different from

responsiveness to wants. It lays many additional demands on both governments and the

governed. To become targets of state policies, needs satisfaction has first to become an urgent

public issue. For government to become motivated to respond to needs, needs ought to be

publicly debated. The necessary condition of the entrance of needs into public discourse is that

the population is able to discover its needs and formulate demands accordingly. Government

officials, in turn, need to examine the citizens’ situation to get a better grasp of what measures

need to be implemented.

Due to the limited visibility of needs, and the limited ability of citizens to articulate their

needs, the government’s capacity to understand and appreciate sensitively the existing problems

as well as an ability to foresee the emerging ones becomes crucially important. This requires

fuller and more accurate understanding and perception of population’s needs, the ability of a

decision-making unit to receive communications from disadvantaged groups, who are less active

at demand making, and to respond to them adequately. Such needs-communication would

require a range of functioning political institutions capable of guaranteeing a greater range and

volume of communication and consultation (including a considerable amount of codified and

professional knowledge to guarantee adequate understanding of complicated public policy

issues).

At the same time, the fact that the well-off are better communicators of their demands

raises important distributional issues. Responsiveness to needs will tend to pit the poor against

more political powerful groups. So that a strong “needs impulse” could come from the

population and so that redirection of investment to human capital could take place, a

15

transformation of alliances among the state and various social groups needs to happen. Thus,

needs-oriented policies and the redistributive politics they imply are likely to cause strong

opposition from those who prefer the status quo.

Variability and planning frame for policy making

Due to the fact that people’s wants and demands vary with greater frequency, whereas

fundamental needs tend to remain stable over a longer period of time responsiveness to wants

and responsiveness to needs will differ from each other in terms of the “planning frame” and the

principles of target-setting. In other words, needs/wants variability adds a time dimension to the

concept of responsiveness and exerts an independent effect on the principles of policy

formulation and policy target setting.

In the case of responsiveness to fast-changing wants, the period of time when policy

response might have the desirable effect is much shorter than in the case of responsiveness to

needs. To respond to wants, some short-term strategies may suffice. The policy response in this

case may be discontinuous and unreliable, with the purpose only to change public mood about

certain issues. Any delays in implementing such policy response (be it political or economic

actions) may render it less relevant and reduce its urgency. In such a situation, authorities may

deliberately refrain from exercising policy responses during the peak of demands. They may

postpone political actions or make half-hearted efforts to implement the policy demanded in the

hope that with a decline in urgency the necessity to implement the policies called for will also

disappear. Put differently, the urgency of a policy response disappears at the time when wants

and desires disappear or change. Together with the urgency of policy response, the electoral

benefits so important for vote-maximizing politicians declines. If, in terms of principals’ support,

needs satisfaction pays off slowly or its electoral benefits are even likely to accrue to a different

government in the distant future, the competing politicians with strictly limited terms of office

may be demotivated to invest in improving the objective levels of needs attainment.

In case of responsiveness to needs, which are more stable than wants, long-term target

setting is essential. Since basic needs are not made irrelevant by the workings of time and

history and, if not addressed directly, tend to evolve slowly, each of them or all of them together

represent a stable, seemingly unchanging policy-making background. Substantial progress in

need satisfaction, therefore, requires a continuous and reliable political process. A responsive

government, therefore, will need to have the ability to perpetually redirect its own attention to

the needed items. In other words, political decision makers and relevant political elites need to

be able to control their own attention and behavior so as not to allow it to deviate from the need-

satisfaction course. State responsiveness will not be just a short-term sporadic reaction, but, on

16

the contrary, it will be long-term dynamic political process with a long-term practically

elaborated policy plans the results of which will become clear only in the distant future.

Malleability and the possibility for manipulation

The fact that wants, preferences and demands are more malleable than basic needs has a

considerable impact on the mechanisms of democratic accountability. Public wants and

preference can be detached from basic needs. Thus, failure to introduce needs-oriented measures

rarely carries penalties. There are exceptions: for instance, failure to contain a rapidly spreading

epidemic can cause widespread public outcry. Yet generally, agents are not turned out of office,

nor are there protests in the streets, because schools or clinics are just as bad (or even worse) this

year as in the last. From the politician’s perspective, “education and health sector reforms may

or may not be important, but they are not urgent” (Nelson, 2007, p. 83).

The key assumption of the democratic theory that democracy causes greater government

responsiveness takes voter’s preferences as exogenous. That is, what principals want and

demand from their agents comes from outside the principal-agent relationship and is not shaped

by that relationship. In reality, however, politicians influence public opinion, not just respond to

it. This is how Jacobs and Skocpol (2010, 121, emphasis added) in their book on healthcare

politics in the United States described the process of Obama’s health reform:

“During many months of partisan battles and legislative maneuvers about the new

legislation, groundless warnings about ‘death panels’ and draconian cuts to

Medicare unnerved many people – and the entire mess was confusing. Not only right

after passage, but in subsequent months, most Americans have told pollsters they are

not sure what is in the legislation. People don’t understand what reform actually

means for them – or what it portends for the future of our economy.”

Greater malleability of wants opens the gates for political manipulation. Responsiveness to

wants, therefore, may go hand in hand with massive public relations campaigns aimed at

shaping people’s perceptions in accordance with the interests of the most influential politico-

economic forces. Thus, the main targets and directions of policy responsiveness may be shaped

by the policy makers themselves in accordance with some dominating interests. With modern

sophisticated techniques in the area of mass communication and marketing, people can easily be

made to want or prefer things barely related to their true needs. Modern skills and means of

control through propaganda and indoctrination actively used by modern policy makers make it

possible to make the needs and wants profiles of population diverge from each other

considerably. At the same time, by responding to fabricated wants and demands, politicians

assure themselves of public support and legitimacy and, therefore, perpetuate the status quo

political regime.

17

In contrast to want-oriented responsiveness, responsiveness to needs leaves little room

for manipulation. Since in any political system there are always forces which try to distract

attention from the needed items and influence policy-making process in accordance with their

own interests, government responsiveness to needs is a matter of decision making and policy

implementation capacity. It requires the ability of political decision makers to control their own

behavior and redirect their actions towards the major needs of population. Government

capabilities in the fields of administration, policy formation, decision making and action are

important for guaranteeing that needs-oriented policy is implemented in form of appropriate

economic or political actions.

Satisfaction criteria and substantiveness of policy response

Due to the differences between needs and wants in terms of satisfaction criteria, real outputs

meeting wants and expressed demands may not be required in order to create the perception that

demands have been fulfilled. Responsiveness to wants does not necessarily imply genuine

fulfillment and may take form of symbolic gratification, which may well be sufficient to create

the feeling of satisfaction among social groups.

The old system theory literature makes some relevant points. The mere symbols of

benefits, in the form of outputs produced in the name of certain groups, can be highly effective

in shaping the nature of response rather than the substance of what was accomplished through

the legislation.

As Easton (1965, 393) puts it:

“Prejudice as through party or leadership identification, ideological predisposition,

vulnerability to persuasion by others, accidental bits and pieces of information, skill

in evaluating such information, and similar factors may be more important in

determining how a member interprets outputs ….. than the actual impact of the

outputs on the circumstances surrounding the members.”

In other words, in the case of responsiveness to wants, wants can be met when in fact they

have obtained only nominal fulfillment through issuing certain formal procedures without

meeting substantive content of the want or demand. In other words, elected officials can avoid

the political repercussions of substantive non-responsiveness by engaging in symbolic

responsiveness (Sharp 1999, 21). There also might be a sort of “public ritual” of affirming the

consensus over the democratic creed – when politicians invoke to the almost universally held

belief in political equality, majority rule, and the right of minorities to state their case (Lee 1991,

33).

18

In the case of responsiveness to needs, symbolic rhetoric is hardly relevant because in this

case governments are responsive in terms of successfully dealing with existing problems. Since

needs are objective (independent of individual preferences) and universal (same for everyone),

responsiveness to needs, on the one hand, will require elaboration of criteria quite independent

of the subjective perceptions of persons or groups. This would require taking into account both

the long-range life situations and specification of the nature of the needs as dictated by the

circumstances, regardless of the personal awareness of the members of a group. On the other

hand, responsiveness to needs will require an “average response” – a response to the needs of

the majority of “typical persons” applying the notion of a floor, threshold, standard or priority.

Table 1 summarizes some potential implications of the differences between needs and

wants to the concept of state responsiveness and further unfolds the concept by splitting it into

responsiveness to needs and responsiveness to wants. The table highlights the public policy

dimension of the two fundamental modes of government action and the characteristics these

modes have during the actual process of policy making. Column 1 lists the character of a

difference between needs and wants; column 2 points to the implication of each of those

differences to the concept of state responsiveness; column 3 elaborates those implications in the

case of responsiveness to wants and column 4 to needs.

TABLE 1: Needs/wants dichotomy and two modes of state responsiveness

NEEDS/WANTS

DIFFERENCES

IMPLICATIONS FOR

RESPONSIVENESS

RESPONSIVENESS TO

WANTS

RESPONSIVENESS TO

NEEDS

OBSERVABILITY

Information

asymmetry and the

activity of

“uncovering needs”

Accommodation by a

decision-making body of

expressed public wants and

demands and production of

respective political output;

legislation or other forms of

output mirrors revealed

demand which are usually

expressed by the well-off.

Since people may be unaware

of their needs, some activity

to uncover needs is necessary;

the public should be enabled

to detect hidden needs; needs

should become a part of

public discourse so that the

public could exert pressure on

the government and make it

respond.

19

VARIABILITY

Time dimension of

target setting.;

planning frame for

policy making

The prevalence of short-

term strategies; sporadic

and discontinuous political

process; with the decline

of issue urgency there is a

decline in the need for

policy response; political

maneuvering between the

peaks of public demand.

The prevalence of long-term

strategies and continuous

and reliable political

process; the ability of policy

makers to keep attention on

the provision of needed

items; the presence of long-

term practically elaborated

policy plans; planning; the

results of policy appear

slowly

MALLEABILITY

Possibility for

manipulation;

decision making and

control capacity

Revealed demands reflect

the status quo; the process

of policy making is

accompanied by political

manipulation and massive

persuasion aimed at shaping

people’s perceptions in

accordance with the views

of dominant interests.

There is little room for

manipulation; the success of

the response depends on the

state capacity to steer – to

control and redirect its own

behavior; administration,

policy formation, decision

making and action capacities

are important.

SATISFACTION

CRITERIA

substantiveness of

policy response

The possibilities of

nominal fulfillment

through issuing certain

formal procedures without

meeting substantive

content of demand; verbal

and symbolic outputs and

invocations to ideological

predispositions are densely

present in the process of

policy making; aggregative

approach;

The irrelevance of symbolic

rhetoric; tangible and

substantive evaluation of

what was accomplished

through the legislation;

objective indicators; the

elaboration of independent

criteria for need satisfaction;

the use of an average

approach by applying the

notion of a floor, threshold,

standard or priority.

To closer link the concept of state responsiveness to the practical process of policy

making, these characteristics can be reorganized by their location at the main stages in the

public policy cycle: agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation, and policy evaluation

20

(table 2). It should be noted, however, that each of those characteristics mentioned in table 1 will

be important at more than one of the stages of policy making.

TABLE 2: Responsiveness to needs and wants at each stage of policy cycle

STAGE IN PUBLIC

POLICY CYCLE

STATE RESPONSIVENESS TO

WANTS

STATE RESPONSIVENESS TO

NEEDS

1. Agenda setting (issue

identification and policy

target elaboration)

The monitoring of overtly expressed

public wants and demands;

mirroring those demands through

the elaboration of short-term

strategies aimed at averting public

discontent and satisfying grievances,

but not necessarily substantive

satisfaction of the content of

demand.

Needs which are invisible to the

public can hardly become a part of

public discourse and enter the policy

agenda. Therefore, pressure on the

government is unlikely. If needs can

be put on the policy agenda, the

setting of long-term targets aimed at

the substantive satisfaction of the

content of the needs is necessary.

2. Policy formulation

(identifying policy

options, analyzing

opinions, choosing policy

methods, consultations

and decisions on methods)

The aggregation of existing

opinions; the possibility of extensive

consultation with different groups,

but finally chosen policies tend to

reflect dominant groups’ interests

(the principle of not-harming

dominant interests); a lack of

precision and ambiguity of the

practical policy plans; an elaboration

of strategies aimed at the creation of

an illusory effect that something is

being done.

A choice of activities, which may

reduce for some people provision

over and above what is required to

meet their needs, even if they might

prefer to maintain the status quo. An

elaboration of multistadial,

relatively precise practical policy

plans aimed at getting more people

to cross the threshold rather than

further enhancing the conditions of

those who have already crossed it.

3. Policy implementation

(implementation strategy

development, decision,

resource allocation)

A choice of the least radical reform

projects, allowing for the

preservation of the status quo;

implementation as a form of shaping

people’s perceptions; practical

policy may deviate from the

originally defined policy line under

pressure from certain groups; Lack

of steering capacity.

A choice of policies aimed at

changing the status quo; state

behavior is steered, controlled and

constantly directed towards needs

satisfaction; practical policy may

deviate a little from the originally

defined policy line, but the

conceptual core is preserved and

perpetuated.

4. Policy evaluation The key indicator of success is The key indicator of success is

21

(comparing and

monitoring preliminary

results of a policy)

diversion of public discontent and

the achievement of a high degree of

correlation between public wants

and symbolic proclamations of

politicians.

tangible positive changes in

objective independent indicators of

need satisfaction of the average

person in the Reference Population

Policy responsiveness to people’s needs and responsiveness to wants may have different,

sometimes contrasting, political properties, which need to be taken into account when defining a

certain government as responsive or unresponsive.

Now that the two types of responsiveness are conceptually laid out, there are still

important questions left unanswered: would policies responsive to needs be possible if they tried

to take account of individual differences in needs? Would trying to implement such policies on

average basis do more harm than good? To deal with these questions one needs to look for

policies that help improve the overall scores by getting more individuals in a reference

population to cross the threshold of minimum wellbeing. In other words, such policies should

follow what is called “Principle of Precedence” by Braybrook, “standard of priority” by

Marcuse, or “universalistic priority” by Bay – the notions implying policies elevating every

person in the reference population above some minimum standard of provision on every matter

of needs, included in a certain universalistic scheme of priorities. These priorities would guide

the choice between conflicting needs until everyone’s basic needs are satisfied. At the same time,

however, these policies should somehow override Pareto Welfare principle and, where possible,

minimize unwelcomed costs for those who are already above the threshold.

Admittedly, no policy can please everyone. When talking about very basic and dire

needs for the majority of the society, however, policies responding to them may be possible.

Human needs related to physical survival would be the most basic needs and more often than

not people would have these needs. Can these basic needs of the majority of the society be better

satisfied without causing problems for the well off and without burdening economy?

Recent research on infant and under-5 mortality rates has revealed that neither high per

capita GDP nor large amount of healthcare spending are crucial for improving these two basic

social outcomes. What is crucial for the effective reduction of mortality rates is the existence of

government-led programs that provide free basic health care to the groups of people who are at

high risk of early death (McGuire 2010: 2). More often than not, more resources fail to improve

social outcomes. It was demonstrated, for example, that lower levels of under-5 and infant

mortality are not associated with any indicator of health care spending (McGuire 2005, 2010). It

was also shown that governmental interventions that are most effective in dramatically reducing

22

under-5 mortality rate are so inexpensive (only about 2-3% of the country’s public health care

spending) that they do not even show up in data on the share of public health care spending

(McGuire 2005). What is necessary for rapid reduction of the loss of human life are cheap

maternal and infant health programs requiring very small absolute amounts being spent

effectively. This is the case for both developing and developed countries. McGuire states that “If

the grinding inadequacy of basic health services in may poor countries is heart-wrenching, their

persistent inadequacy in some rich nations [the United States] is astonishing” (McGuire 2010:

307). For some reasons, cheap but effective policies of infant and maternal basic health care are

off the radar or not prioritized on the policy-making agendas even in post-industrial democracies.

Given the above said, to contribute to human development, a better theoretical specification of

regime responsiveness and understanding of the needs-oriented policies – those improving

actual social outcomes – as well as the effects of democracy/non-democracy on such policies is

necessary.

3. Conclusion

The above analysis at the theoretical level elaborates the two modes of state responsiveness:

responsiveness to wants and responsiveness to needs; the former implying a policy aimed at

giving people what they demand from the government, and the latter implying a policy aimed at

giving people what is objectively good for them.

From the perspective of agency theory, responsiveness to objective needs is different from

giving people what they demand (responsiveness to wants). They have different, even

contrasting, political properties which have significant implications for the relationship between

the governing and the governed. These implications derive from the distinctions between needs

and wants as targets of policymaking along the dimensions of observability, variability,

malleability and satisfaction criteria. In the most simplistic terms:

1) wants are visible, whereas needs are less so;

2) wants change fast, whereas needs change slowly;

3) wants can be manipulated, whereas needs cannot;

4) wants can be satisfied symbolically, whereas needs only tangibly.

These differences are not mutually exclusive; they are interconnected. When needs and wants

are understood as targets of policy making, these differences have a range of significant

implications in terms of policy purpose, its process, results, and result evaluation. From the

principal-agent perspective, the two kinds of responsiveness conceptualized above are different

and imply different mechanisms of accountability.

The political mechanisms of need satisfaction are different from the mechanisms driving

responsiveness to people’s wants and demands. In the case of responsiveness to basic needs, the

23

procedural theory of democracy loses its explanatory power. Once objective needs are

introduced as an ultimate dependent variable, the assumption that electoral sanction, as well as

other attributes of democratic regimes, lead to better outcomes is challenged. If responsiveness

is understood as a type of relationship between the governing and the governed, the political

characteristics of this relationship – the incentive structures necessary for making the governing

responsive and the consequences of their activity – change considerably once needs satisfaction

is taken as the ultimate target of government action. Several important for future study

inferences can be made from this paper:

1) Democratic institutions in general, and competitive elections in particular, may not drive the

improved allocation of resources necessary for better welfare performance. In other words,

electoral incentives do not systematically exert effective pressure in favor of needs-oriented

reallocation similar to the pressure they exert in favor of satisfaction of public preferences

and demands.

2) The reallocation of resources necessary for better social outcomes is rarely implemented in

response to popular demands and is rarely driven by expectations of electoral support.

3) Democracy can often give people what they want and demand, but is less likely to give them

what is objectively good for them. “Good” is understood as the achievement of better social

outcomes. Procedural democratic accountability is undermined in the case of substantive

issues. The connection between democracy (particularly its dimension of inter-elite

competition) and basic needs satisfaction is weak.

The fundamental empirical questions for future research are: since responsiveness to needs and

responsiveness to wants imply different strategies of policy making, what dimensions of

democracy which work in the case of wants, work/does not work in the case of needs? Do

certain dimensions of democracy, e.g. inter-elite competition and public participation, play

different roles, that is, while causing responsiveness to wants do they inhibit responsiveness to

needs?

NOTES

1. These questions seem to be particularly relevant in light of the fact that empirical literature dealing with

responsiveness to wants confirms the positive effect of democracy on public wants satisfaction, whereas literature

dealing with the effects of democracy on presumable empirical indicators of basic needs, such as Human

Development Index (HDI), Quality of Life (QOL), Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), infant mortality rates,

life expectancy and other indicators of general well-being of individuals and societies fail to reach an unequivocal

conclusion regarding the effects of political regime on social outcomes. These different degrees of conclusiveness

point to the fact that, in terms of policy making, needs satisfaction is somehow different from wants satisfaction. If

24

democratic institutions can make government pay more attention to public wants and demands, why can they not

guarantee state responsiveness to basic human needs? This discrepancy begs for more empirical scrutiny. My task

here is rather theoretical – to develop analytical concepts of responsiveness to needs and responsiveness to wants.

For a summary of existing studies on the issue, see Haggard, Stephan and Rober R. Kufman. 2008. Development,

Democracy, and Welfare States: Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe . Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, p. 365, Appendix Two “National Empirical Studies of the Effects of Democracy on Social Policy

and Social Outcomes.”

2. These characteristics of basic needs link the concept of “needs” to its cognates, such as, “capabilities”,

“functionings” (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000), and “human development” (UNDP 1990) which are also grounded

in human nature and place human beings at the center of analysis and take them as the desirable end of all

government activities. These concepts are closely related. Human development implies the expansion of human

capabilities; the first Human Development Report argues that if the scales of development do not finely balance the

formation of human capabilities and the use people make of their acquired capabilities, “considerable human

frustration may result” (UNDP 1990, 10). Sen argues that development should be conceptualized as the growth of

human capabilities, or abilities to live the lives that people have reason to choose (Sen, 1999). At the same time the

achievement of such “functioning” as physical survival is necessary for the exercise of very basic capabilities, such

as to be adequately nourished, be cared for when sick etc. Levels of both functionings and capabilities, in turn,

indicate the degree to which a society is meeting basic needs in nutrition, health care, water and sanitation and

education. If a society fails to meet such basic needs not only the risk of early death but also failure to construct the

capabilities of living takes place (McGuire, 2010). Therefore, existence of capabilities is preconditioned on

functionings, and meeting basic needs is necessary for both. The conceptual bundle formed by “needs,”

“capabilities” or “functionings” can be disentangled. But we are interested in defining state responsiveness to

“something objective” (needs) covered by all these concepts vis-à-vis state responsiveness to subjective wants and

demands. Therefore, instead of laying out the specifics of each, to proceed we need to raise the level of abstraction

and to try to find a “root definition” (Collier & Levitsky, 1997) that, on the one hand, captures a set of common

core characteristics of all these sub-types, and, on the other hand, draws meaningful boundaries between the target

of responsiveness they describe and others. The concept of needs provides a good reference term.

3. Sen would probably disagree with the argument that it is “same for everyone,” by saying that different people

(for ex. invalids vs. healthy) may have different needs (Sen 1985; Sen 1993; Sen 1999a). However, here I treat

public as a unit and need to have a concept of basic needs applicable to such unit as a whole. Sen is right from

individualistic perspective, but it would be difficult to find an objective indicator which would reflect everyone’s

individual needs in a society taken as a unit. Besides, I define needs only as targets of policymaking. I treat them in

terms of principal-agent relationships, to integrate needs/wants dichotomy into analysis of democratic

accountability and responsiveness.

4. The term Reference Population is adopted from Braybrooke’s work on human needs. In his work, Reference

Populations means a group of people whose needs are under consideration by Policy-Making Population (political

authorities). See Braybrooke 1987.

25

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