Subnational Variation in Electoral Accountability: Local Public Good Investments and Incumbent Support

Abstract

Theories of democratic governance assume that citizens hold politicians accountable for their performance in providing public services. This study expands the existing debate by shifting its theoretical lens to subnational heterogeneity in satisfaction with government performance and incumbent support. Existing accounts suggest that local political and social contexts are likely to condition citizens’ perceptions of government performance. Since satisfaction with public services is driven not only by policy outcomes but also by the processes involved in decision making, the presence of stronger and denser voice and accountability mechanisms in small local units that increase citizens’ sense of the ability to influence local outcomes is likely to translate into higher satisfaction with government performance independent of the outcome itself. Using an original panel dataset containing detailed information on education and health investments and electoral outcomes in Turkey, I find that particularly health investments have a positive, yet delayed e↵ect on the vote share of the incumbent government. However, consistent with the theoretical expectations, this positive effect is limited only to small districts. A crucial contribution of this study is that the effect of public services on incumbent support is not uniform. By showing that local contexts may condition satisfaction with government performance, and thereby electoral outcomes, the study makes an important contribution to the literature on electoral behavior and distributive politics as well as governance and accountability.