Competent Politicians Research Articles

Political selection when uncertainty is high

AbstractDo voters place their trust in tried and tested leaders when uncertainty is high or do they prefer a new slate of leaders who are arguably more competent? To study this question, we make use of hand‐collected data on 402,385 candidates who competed in open‐list local council elections (1996–2020) in Bavaria. The 2020 elections took place at the dawn of the Covid‐19 pandemic, a time of high uncertainty about the future course of events. Using local heterogeneity in Covid‐19 outbreaks and related school/daycare closures to proxy the degree of perceived uncertainty across Bavarian municipalities, we show with a difference‐in‐differences design that councilors' incumbency advantage declined more in exposed municipalities. This decrease in the incumbency advantage is limited to male and non‐university educated incumbents, resulting in shifted patterns of political selection. Overall, we conclude that voters select more competent politicians when they face uncertainty about the future.

Political Selection and Economic Policy

Abstract Does political selection matter for policy in representative governments? I use administrative data on local politicians in Finland and exploit exogenous variation generated by close elections to show that electing more high-income, incumbent and competent politicians (who earn more than observably similar politicians) improves fiscal sustainability outcomes, but does not decrease the size of the public sector. I also provide suggestive evidence that electing more university-educated local councillors leads to more public spending without adverse effects on fiscal sustainability. I reconcile these findings with survey data on candidate ideology and demonstrate that different qualities are differentially associated with economic ideology.

Social class predicts preference for competent politicians

Perceptions of interpersonal competence are an important predictor of success in the political domain. However, we provide evidence that competence is valued differently by individuals across the social class spectrum. Across two experiments (N1 = 441; N2 = 500), we found that voting-eligible participants of relatively higher social class expressed a greater likelihood than their lower-class counterparts of voting for a candidate embodying competence. Moreover, they were more likely to explicitly prefer such a candidate to one embodying warmth. Exploratory analyses suggest that these preferences were mediated by perceptions relating to self-interest and self-other similarity: compared to their lower-class counterparts, higher-class potential voters saw the competent candidate as more likely to care about people like them and as more interpersonally close. An internal meta-analysis suggested that these patterns of preference were unique to competent politicians and that they were meaningfully different from class-based patterns of preference for warm politicians. We conclude that competence, in the political domain, is distinctively appealing to higher-class individuals, and we discuss the implications of these findings for psychological theory, political participation, and the representativeness of the political system in general.

Citizens’ Aversion to Pay Raises for Politicians: The Risk of Self-Interest Matter More Than the Promise of Competence

Abstract Citizens value competence in politicians. However, while offering high pay is a key strategy when recruiting competent candidates in the job market, most citizens are highly averse to paying politicians higher salaries. We argue that this aversion arises from one fundamental concern among citizens: self-interested politicians. Using data from a large-scale preregistered survey experiment, we show that citizens are affected by the argument that higher salaries may attract self-interested politicians, whereas they are not affected by the argument that higher salaries will attract competent politicians. Surprisingly, the more positively citizens view politicians, the more they are affected by the argument about self-interested politicians. These results suggest that citizens may view modest salaries as a guard against self-interested politicians.

Balancing Governance Capacity and Legitimacy: How the Norwegian Government Handled the COVID-19 Crisis as a High Performer.

This essay addresses how the Norwegian government has handled the coronavirus pandemic. Compared with many other countries, Norway has performed well in handling the crisis. This must be understood in the context of competent politicians, a high‐trust society with a reliable and professional bureaucracy, a strong state, a good economic situation, a big welfare state, and low population density. The Norwegian government managed to control the pandemic rather quickly by adopting a suppression strategy, followed by a control strategy, based on a collaborative and pragmatic decision‐making style, successful communication with the public, a lot of resources, and a high level of citizen trust in government. The alleged success of the Norwegian case is about the relationship between crisis management capacity and legitimacy. Crisis management is most successful when it is able to combine democratic legitimacy with government capacity.

Politician Quality, Fiscal Policy and Ideology

Does politician quality matter for policy in representative governments? I use administrative registry data on local politicians in Finland and exploit exogenous variation generated by close electoral races that shift the quality composition of local councils to show that (i) electing more high-income, incumbent, and competent politicians (defined as those who have a higher income relative to others with similar observable characteristics) improves fiscal sustainability outcomes but does not decrease the size of the public sector, and (ii) symmetrically, electing more university-educated local councilors leads to an increase in public spending without any adverse effects on fiscal sustainability. To reconcile these findings, I combine the micro-data on electoral candidates with unique survey data on their policy positions. Politician qualities are differentially associated with economic ideology, and these correlations tally with the policy effects.

YESUS DAN MACHIAVELLI: MORALITAS, RELIGIUSITAS DAN KOMPETENSI POLITISI DI RUANG POLITIK

This research was conducted to answer the question of what competent politicians are and the relationship between the strategies they use in the public sphere with moral and religious principles. The research rests on the thesis that the competence of politicians cannot be separated from morality and religiosity. The goal is achieved through asymmetrical comparison of the teachings of Jesus with Machiavelli's political thoughts. The teachings of Jesus and Machiavelli's thoughts–about the situation of public sphere, the strategy used to overcome the situation and the role of moral and religious principles in the public sphere–will be compared to understand and answer the questions asked. It shows that competencies have relations with effective strategies to overcome the unideal situations in political public sphere and the application of value systems that limit the use of political strategies. Thus, political strategy has a strong relationship with religiosity and morality.

Uncertain Policy Implementation with Public Information

Politicians' policy proposals are often vetted by the media, academics, and non-partisan organizations. This paper explores the effects of this policy vetting, modeled as a public signal about the expected outcome of the policy, on a politician's incentive to implement the policies she proposes. In my model, the voter and the politician are uncertain about the competence of the politician and the suitability of her proposed policy. Because more competent politicians are more likely to propose good policies, the voter can use the policy signal to update her beliefs about the politician. This updating creates a perverse reputational incentive for the politician to implement her policy proposal if and only if its expected outcome is sufficiently low. When the results of vetting are shown only to the politician, she implements her policy only when its expected outcome is sufficiently high, because her policy information does not directly affect the voter's beliefs about her.

Ambition, personalist regimes, and control of authoritarian leaders

Why do elites in some authoritarian regimes but not others remove from power the leaders who harm their interests? We develop a formal theory explaining this. The theory shows how elites’ ambition prevents them from controlling authoritarian leaders. Because ambitious elites are willing to stage coups to acquire power even when the leader is good, ambition renders elites’ claims that the leader’s actions harm them less credible, making the other elites less likely to support coups. We show that the impact of the proportion of competent politicians on personalist regimes is non-monotonic: personalist regimes are most likely to emerge not only when there are few competent politicians but also when there are lots of them. We also provide insight into which elites become coup-plotters. The theory explains the emergence of personalist regimes, the frequency of coups, and why some authoritarian countries enjoy a more competent leadership than others.

“Together or Apart”? On Joint versus Separate Electoral Accountability

Democratic constitutions assign competing policy-making responsibilities across multiple elected agents. One agent initiates policies (the proposer) and the other scrutinizes and either passes or rejects them (the veto player). A fundamental distinction lies in whether both offices are subject to direct elections (“separate appointments”), or whether voters instead are forced to make a single decision that determines the electoral fate of both agents (“joint appointments”). Why should voters benefit from a relatively coarse electoral instrument? A career-concerned veto player builds reputation through rejection of the proposer’s policies. A system that commits voters to bind the electoral fate of both agents reduces the veto player’s incentives to engage in spurious obstruction of the proposer’s initiatives. This can improve voters’ retrospective assessment of politicians, and their ability to select competent politicians through elections.

Delegation in sovereign wealth funds

This paper models the incentives of a politician to delegate decision-making power in a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) to an independent external manager. I analyze in a repeated two-stage game whether the delegation is socially optimal and demonstrate under which circumstances it takes place. First, the politician decides whether to delegate. Second, based on his decision, two alternative subgames take place where output is produced and voters decide on reelection of the politician. I show that delegation increases the SWF’s output. Two effects matter: First, the conflict of interests between politician and manager disciplines both players and allows voters to mitigate their informational problem. Second, as a consequence of management outsourcing and higher transparency, the SWF’s average productivity improves. Less competent politicians are more willing to delegate as it improves their chances to be reelected. In general, the delegation is more likely if the quality of existing political and economic institutions is low.

Preferential Voting, Accountability and Promotions into Political Power: Evidence from Sweden

Preferential voting has been introduced in a number of proportional election systems over the last 20 years, mainly as a means to increase the accountability of individual politicians. But most of these reforms have been criticized as blatant failures. In this paper, we discover a genuinely new fact, which calls into question this negative evaluation. We show that preferential voting in a general election can operate as a stand‐in internal primary election for top party positions. To do this, we rely on a unique data set from four waves of Swedish local elections, which includes every nominated politician in each of 290 municipal assemblies. We use a natural‐experiment (regression‐ discontinuity) approach to estimate the causal effect of winning the most preferential votes on becoming the local party leader, and find that narrow “list winners” are over 50 percent more likely to become party leaders than their runner‐ups. Comparing across politicians, the effect of list winning is the strongest for competent politicians, who are also more likely to draw preferential votes than mediocre politicians. Comparing across municipalities, the response to narrow list winning is the strongest within unthreatened governing majorities, where voters also use the preferential vote the most frequently.

Retrospective Economic Voting and the Intertemporal Dynamics of Electoral Accountability in the American States

Are politicians' policymaking reputations durable according to the judgment of voters? A theory of intertemporal attribution discounting is advanced for purposes of explaining how voters apply heterogeneous sanctions and rewards for a non-incumbent candidate’s prior economic stewardship in elective office. Aggregate electoral data on ex-governors in the American states uncovers strong empirical evidence of intertemporal attribution discounting behavior. Voters using prior economic stewardship over entire tenure in office for ex-governors form the strongest initial retrospective economic attributions, but also intertemporally discount ex-governors seeking future elective office at a higher rate than compared to when their retrospective evaluations are restricted to either the last term or final year in office. This study demonstrates that reputational slippage transpires with the passage of time between prior elective office and returning to the electoral arena, whereby voters experience increasing difficulty when it comes to rewarding competent experienced politicians, as well as sanctioning incompetent counterparts.

Political Selection and the Concentration of Political Power

This paper studies the effects of power-concentrating institutions on the quality of political selection, i.e., the voters’ capacity to identify and empower competent politicians. In our model, candidates are privately informed about their abilities and are driven by office rents as well as welfare considerations. We show that variations in power concentration involve a trade-off. On the one hand, higher concentration of power enables the voters’ preferred politician to enforce larger parts of his agenda. On the other hand, higher power concentration increases electoral stakes and thereby induces stronger policy distortions. We identify a negative relation between the optimal level of power concentration and the extent of office motivation. In particular, full concentration of power is desirable if and only if politicians are mostly welfare oriented. The results of an empirical analysis are in line with this prediction.

DO BETTER PAID POLITICIANS PERFORM BETTER? DISENTANGLING INCENTIVES FROM SELECTION

The wage paid to politicians affects both the choice of citizens to run for office and the performance of those who are appointed. First, if skilled individuals shy away from politics because of higher opportunities in the private sector, an increase in politicians’ pay may change their mind. Second, if the re-election prospects of incumbents depend on their in-office deeds, a higher wage may foster performance. We use data on all Italian municipal governments from 1993 to 2001 and test these hypotheses in a quasi-experimental setup. In Italy, the wage of mayors depends on population size and sharply rises at different thresholds. We apply a regression discontinuity design to the only threshold that uniquely identifies a wage increase: 5,000 inhabitants. Exploiting the existence of a two-term limit, we further disentangle the composition from the incentive component of the effect of the wage on performance. Our results show that a higher wage attracts more-educated candidates, and that better-paid politicians size down the government machinery by improving efficiency. Importantly, most of this effect is driven by the selection of competent politicians, rather than by the incentive to be re-elected.

Direct Democracy, Political Delegation, and Responsibility Substitution

In practice, the most relevant question for direct democracy is not whether it could advantageously replace representative democracy, but whether it can be combined with it to improve political outcomes. We find that, by reallocating some political power to the population, direct democracy significantly affects the incentives, selection, and reelection prospects of politicians. When citizens can correct politicians’ mistakes, elected representatives have a lower incentive to search for good policies, which affects citizens’ ability to screen competent politicians. Lowering the cost of direct democracy institutions induces a negative spiral on politicians’ incentives and may even reduce voters’ welfare. We study the effect of direct democracy institutions on reelection probabilities and politicians’ competence, and show that our theory’s main implications are consistent with empirical evidence from U.S. states.

Do Better Paid Politicians Perform Better? Disentangling Incentives from Selection

The wage paid to politicians affects both the choice of citizens to run for an elective office and the performance of those who are appointed. First, if skilled individuals shy away from politics because of higher opportunities in the private sector, an increase in politicians' pay may change their mind. Second, if the reelection prospects of incumbents depend on their in-office deeds, a higher wage may foster performance. We use data on all Italian municipal governments from 1993 to 2001 and test these hypotheses in a quasi-experimental framework. In Italy, the wage of the mayor depends on population size and sharply rises at different thresholds. We apply a regression discontinuity design to the only threshold that uniquely identifies a wage increase - 5,000 inhabitants - to control for unobservable town characteristics. Exploiting the existence of a two-term limit, we further disentangle the composition from the incentive component of the effect of the wage on performance. Our results show that a higher wage attracts more educated candidates, and that better paid politicians size down the government machinery by improving internal efficiency. Importantly, most of this performance effect is driven by the selection of competent politicians, rather than by the incentive to be reelected.

Transforming Third World Cities Through Urban Governance: Fresh Evidence

Many Ghanaians believe that introducing multi-party elections at the metropolitan, municipal and district levels would ensure the election of competent people to manage the urban or local economy. This belief is premised on the assumption that electorates are informed and would vote for competent politicians. Using the 2008 elections in Ghana, it is argued that only a minority of electorates vote on issues; the majority vote along tribal and party lines; and based on how humble a politician is or simply based on monetocracy. This means that introducing elections into the local government system would not necessarily lead to a transformation of the local or urban economy; greater local democracy is not the answer to the housing problem, sanitation crisis, unemployment burden and the poverty challenge. There may be the need for a new form of local democracy.

Waren zij wel bekwaam? - Twee vrouwelijke premiers in het Westen in de late twintigste eeuw

Until recently, very few women played a part in parliamentary and governmental politics in Western democracies. Indeed, there was a widely held belief that women did not make competent politicians. The handful of female parliamentarians who did emerge after World War II were expected to restrict themselves to policy areas traditionally regarded as suitable for women, such as health, social work, and education, and to leave more weighty and prestigious fields such as economics, foreign affairs, and defence to their male colleagues. The development of the welfare society, better educational opportunities, and new social movements such as second-wave feminism prompted a rise in the number of female politicians which challenged the idea of female incompetence. A number of prominent female political leaders came to the fore, among them two women prime ministers: Margaret Thatcher (UK, 1979-1990) and Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway, 1981, 1986-1989, 1990-1996). How competently did these two women perform? In order to answer to this question, I conducted an analysis of each of these women leaders in two important policy areas. The results undermine the above-mentioned prejudices and show that both leaders were competent in the areas under discussion.

Do Better Paid Politicians Perform Better? Disentangling Incentives from Selection

The wage paid to politicians affects both the choice of citizens to run for an elective office and the performance of those who are appointed. First, if skilled individuals shy away from politics because of higher opportunities in the private sector, an increase in politicians' pay may change their mind. Second, if the reelection prospects of incumbents depend on their in-office deeds, a higher wage may foster performance. We use data on all Italian municipal governments from 1993 to 2001 and test these hypotheses in a quasi-experimental framework. In Italy, the wage of the mayor depends on population size and sharply rises at different thresholds. We apply a regression discontinuity design to the only threshold that uniquely identifies a wage increase – 5,000 inhabitants – to control for unobservable town characteristics. Exploiting the existence of a two-term limit, we further disentangle the composition from the incentive component of the effect of the wage on performance. Our results show that a higher wage attracts more educated candidates, and that better paid politicians size down the government machinery by improving internal efficiency. Importantly, most of this performance effect is driven by the selection of competent politicians, rather than by the incentive to be reelected.