Yes, that seems to be where sama is coming from. On the other hand, I suspect that this is again one of those truisms that may not really be true at all. Consi

Yes, that seems to be where sama is coming from. On the other hand, I suspect that this is again one of those truisms that may not really be true at all. Consider that in Europe (and to a lesser extent also in the US), mainstream academic economists have essentially been begging politicians to spend more, as that is what the macroeconomic models have been advising them to do for the last few years. And yet there has been a lot of austerity. This really clashes with the idea that elected officials simply give in to demands by voters. The story is obviously more nuanced than this simple truism. Add to this that it is unclear what "living within their means" even means. If you look at it in terms of physical goods and services available, then of course they are living within their means, because living beyond means at the level of a society is physically impossible. You could then clarify your definition to encompass something like "being on a sustainable path into the future", but again, if you evaluate that in terms of physical reality a fair evaluation is probably that democratic states are on average better at preserving resources etc. than states with other forms of government. The cynic in me would say that the whole "democracy and low growth don't go together" is really code for "democracy and low growth and the kind of unequal society I like don't go together",[0] because of course democratic voting outcomes will demand fairness in the sense that if a belt-tightening across society is necessary, the belts of those at the top have to be tightened the most. So: democracy, low growth, unequal society: pick any two out of three, but you can't have all three at once. [0] Though I assume most people talking about these issue are not consciously aware that there even is a distinction.