Legislative institutions are expected to specialize in policy-making expertise relative to the electorate. However, it often takes many electoral cycles before a voter can be certain the policy chosen is right for them. We develop a model of a politician endogenously acquiring expert information, knowing that voters will also only have a noisy signal as to the rightness of the policy when they make their re-election decision. Policy institutions that are designed to enhance democratic accountability and responsiveness to voter policy preferences ex ante (e.g., strong, well-sorted parties; public votes) lead to strictly worse performance in terms of information acquisition. We discuss this general trade-off between accountability and performance, and its applications for constitutional design and the optimal division between legislatures and the executive/bureaucracy.