Electoral Accountability Research Articles

Are school officials held accountable for fiscal stress? Evidence from school district financial intervention systems

Performance accountability systems have generally been used as a way to provide salient information to citizens regarding school district performance, enabling voters to make more informed decisions at the ballot box. This paper considers the electoral accountability consequences of financial intervention systems, which monitor school district financial health and intervene in cases of severe financial problems. Examining the Ohio fiscal stress label system, I find that the labels received through this system lead to greater school board member and school administrator turnover, with larger effects found following the most severe label that involves the state takeover of the school district’s financial decision-making. The large turnover effects for school boards after the state takeover appear to be driven by a decreased voter preference for incumbents after the state takeover. These results suggest that citizens in these school districts are likely placing accountability pressure on school officials more as a result of the sanction (i.e., the state takeover) than the financial information these labels may provide.

Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts: Executive Aggrandizement and Party-State Fusion in India

Many concerned citizens, including judges, bureaucrats, politicians, activists, journalists and academics, have been claiming that Indian democracy has been imperilled by the current government in power at the Union level since 2014. To examine the claim, the paper sets up an analytic framework for accountability mechanisms liberal democratic constitutions put in place to provide a check on the political executive. The assumption is that only if this framework is being dismantled in a systematic manner can we say that democracy itself is in peril. This framework helps distinguish between actions that one may disagree with ideologically but are nonetheless permitted to an elected government from actions that strike at the heart of liberal democratic constitutionalism (the first set of actions are reversible when political opponents come to power, the second set of actions make it harder, if not impossible, for such opponents to come to power). Liberal democratic constitutions typically adopt three ways of making accountability demands on the political executive: vertically by demanding electoral accountability to the people, horizontally by subjecting it to accountability demands of other state institutions like the judiciary and fourth branch institutions, and diagonally by requiring discursive accountability to the media, the academy and civil society. This framework assures democracy over time -- i.e. it guarantees democratic governance not only to the people today, but to all future peoples of India. While each elected government has the mandate to implement its policies over a wide range, seeking to reduce the effectiveness of these modes of accountability is legitimately understood as an effort to entrench the ruling party's stranglehold on power in ways that are inimical to the continued operation of democracy. The paper finds that the Modi government has indeed sought to undermine each of these three strands of executive accountability. Unlike the assault on democratic norms during India Gandhi's Emergency in the 1970s, there is no evidence of a direct or full-frontal attack today. The BJP government's mode of operation has been subtle and incremental, but systemic. Hence, the paper characterises the phenomenon as 'killing a constitution by a thousand cuts'. The incremental assaults on democratic governance have typically been justified by a combination of a managerial rhetoric of efficiency and good governance (made plausible by the undeniable imperfection of our institutions) and a divisive rhetoric of hyper-nationalism (which brands political opponents of the party as traitors to the state). Unlike paradigmatic examples of the recent wave of democratic deconsolidation -- Poland and Hungary -- India's relatively long experience with democracy has enabled robust, and often successful, opposition to many of these moves. And yet, many democratic norms and mechanisms have been seriously undermined. The direction of travel is unmistakably towards a 'guided' or 'managed' democracy which will structurally ensure the political dominance of the ruling party.

Hurricanes, Climate Change Policies and Electoral Accountability

This paper studies how politicians and voters respond to new information on the threats of climate change. Using data on the universe of federal disaster declarations between 1989 and 2014, we document that congress members from districts hit by a hurricane are more likely to support bills promoting more environmental regulation and control in the year after the disaster. The response to hurricanes does not seem to be driven by logrolling behavior or lobbysts' pressure. The change in legislative agenda is persistent over time, and it is associated with an electoral penalty in the following elections. The response is mainly promoted by representatives in safe districts, those with more experience, and those with strong pro-environment records. Our evidence thus reveals that natural disasters may trigger a permanent change in politicians' beliefs, but only those with a sufficient electoral strength or with strong ideologies are willing to engage in promoting policies with short-run costs and long-run benefits.

Public Costs versus Private Gain: Assessing the Effect of Different Types of Information about Corruption Incidents on Electoral Accountability

Are voters’ attitudes towards corrupt candidates affected by the details they learn about candidates’ wrongdoing? This study examines the effect of including different pieces of information emphasising the public costs or private gain of a similar corruption incident on the probability of support for the incumbent mayor’s re-election. I use three surveys experiments with online convenience samples of Brazilian subjects. The survey experiments use various vignettes presenting a fictitious Brazilian incumbent mayor with antecedents of misuse of public funds, running for re-election. I manipulate the details that subjects learn on those antecedents to assess whether information on the public costs of the corruption incident or on the candidate’s illicit enrichment stimulates a stronger rejection. Additional manipulations are used to test rival hypotheses. Results consistently show that information showing the candidate’s illicit enrichment drives a stronger negative response than every alternative treatment.

La calidad de la democracia en Honduras, 2014-2018: sistema político, sociedad civil e instituciones en perspectiva

El artículo explora la evolución reciente, las disputas y prospectivas del régimen democrático existente en Honduras. Se parte de la propuesta teórico-metodológica sustentada por Leonardo Morlino para el estudio de la calidad de la democracia. Ese modelo analítico se desdobla en ocho dimensiones: la participación política, la competencia política, la rendición de cuentas electoral, la rendición de cuentas interinstitucional, el Estado de Derecho, la Responsividad, las libertades, y la solidaridad/ igualdad. El artículo toma en consideración las investigaciones previas de ambos autores en la temática. Así, el texto discute las principales limitaciones y las políticas públicas necesarias para mejorar la calidad de la democracia existente en el país.*** A qualidade da democracia em Honduras, 2014-2018: sistema político, sociedade civil e instituições em perspectiva ***O artigo explora a evolução recente, as disputas e prospectivas do regime democrático existente em Honduras. Parte-se da proposta teórico-metodológica sustentada pelo cientista político Leonardo Morlino para o estudo da qualidade da democracia. Esse modelo analítico se desdobra em oito dimensões: a participação política, a competência política, a prestação de contas eleitoral, a prestação de contas interinstitucional, o Estado de Direito, a Responsividade, as liberdades e a solidariedade/ igualdade. O artigo toma em consideração as pesquisas prévias de ambos os autores na temática. Assim, discute as principais limitações e as políticas públicas necessárias para melhorar a qualidade da democracia existente no país.Palavras-chave: Honduras. Democracia. Sistema Político. Cidadania. Direitos Humanos.

Information Provision, Voter Coordination, and Electoral Accountability: Evidence from Mexican Social Networks

How do social networks moderate the way political information influences electoral accountability? We propose a simple model in which incumbent malfeasance revelations can facilitate coordination around less malfeasant challenger parties in highly connected voter networks, even when voters update favorably about incumbent party malfeasance. We provide evidence from Mexico of this mechanism by leveraging a field experiment in a context where the provision of incumbent malfeasance information increased support for incumbent parties, despite voters continuing to believe that challengers were less malfeasant than incumbents. Combining this experiment with detailed family network data, we show that—consistent with the model—the increase in incumbent party vote share due to information provision was counteracted by coordination around less malfeasant challengers in precincts with greater network connectedness. Individual-level data further demonstrate that networks facilitated explicit and tacit coordination among voters. These findings suggest that networks can help voters coordinate around information to help remove poorly performing politicians.

Fresh pipes with dirty water: How quality of government shapes the provision of public goods in democracies

AbstractA large strand of research holds that democracy with its broad representation and electoral accountability is beneficial for the provision of public goods. Yet, there is a large variation in how democracies perform, indicating that democratic institutions alone do not suffice for securing citizens’ wellbeing. Recent studies have stressed the equal importance of state capacity for public goods delivery. These studies, however, rarely investigate how the lack of state capacity mutes the effects of democratic institutions on public goods provision. This article addresses this gap by using a mixed methods design. First, the conditional effects of democracy and quality of government (QoG) are tested on the previously under‐researched domain of the provision of clean water. The results show that democracy is associated with higher water quality only in countries where QoG is high. If QoG is low, more democracy is even related to lower water quality. The second stage of the analysis proceeds by examining how poor QoG disrupts the effects of democracy on public access to safe drinking water using interview data from a typical case of Moldova. The analysis illustrates that democracy has a number of positive effects and incentivises politicians to focus on the visible aspects of water provision, including the expansion of the water pipe network. However, low QoG hampers adoption and implementation of long‐term policies necessary for securing an aspect of water provision that is harder to achieve – namely water quality. This leaves the fresh pipes with dirty water.

Citizen Political Knowledge and Accountability: Panel Survey Evidence on Devolved Government in Kenya

Devolution complicates citizens’ ability to assign responsibility for the provision of public goods and services to different tiers of government. Misattribution of responsibility limits the effectiveness electoral accountability in the nested principal-agent relationships comprising voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. This raises two important questions. First, how do citizens learn about the functions of different tiers of government under devolution? Second, how do levels of political knowledge condition citizens’ evaluations of sub-national governments? Using cross-sectional and panel survey data from Kenya (2014 - 2018), this article shows that voters accumulate knowledge through exposure to government services, but that gender and partisanship condition knowledge accumulation. In addition, exposed citizens are more likely to give positive evaluations of subnational politicians, despite the fact that such exposure may reveal subnational governments’ low capacity, ineffectiveness, and governance gaps. These findings advance our understanding of the dynamics of political accountability under devolution.

What Politicians Believe About Electoral Accountability

Despite legislators’ incentives to respond to their constituents’ opinions on salient issues, they often take positions at odds with public opinion in their districts. These gaps in dyadic representation can arise because of politicians’ perceptions of which constituents will hold them accountable for their actions in office and of their potential future electoral opponents. Using original survey data from more the 3,000 candidates running for state legislative office in 2014 and 2016, I document American politicians’ beliefs about important factors influencing electoral accountability. To test to whom politicians believe they must be responsive, I survey their perceptions of which citizens are most likely to vote and pay attention to their actions in office. I find asymmetries in politicians’ beliefs about to whom they must be accountable. Politicians perceive the partisan makeup of their districts fairly accurately but overestimate the Republican share of the district’s residents. Candidates from both parties underestimated Democratic turnout in 2014. In a conjoint experiment, candidates from both parties believed that Republicans and citizens with conservative issue positions were more likely to turn out and to pay attention to what they do in office. Republican candidates are also more likely to fear losing in future primary elections than Democrats are. Candidates’ perceptions suggest that they would strategically respond more to conservative constituents, possibly exacerbating asymmetric polarization.

Hurricanes, Climate Change Policies and Electoral Accountability

This paper studies how politicians and voters respond to new information on the threats of climate change. Using data on the universe of federal disaster declarations between 1989 and 2014, we document that congress members from districts hit by a hurricane are more likely to support bills promoting more environmental regulation and control in the year after the disaster. The response to hurricanes does not seem to be driven by logrolling behavior or lobbysts' pressure. The change in legislative agenda is persistent over time, and it is associated with an electoral penalty in the following elections. The response is mainly promoted by representatives in safe districts, those with more experience, and those with strong pro-environment records. Our evidence thus reveals that natural disasters may trigger a permanent change in politicians' beliefs, but only those with a sufficient electoral strength or with strong ideologies are willing to engage in promoting policies with short-run costs and long-run benefits.

Retrospective Voting on the Party Level: An Icelandic Test

This research note adds to the emerging body of literature arguing that retrospective voting works on the level of political parties – for government and opposition parties alike – by investigating the generalisability of previous research findings. Furthermore, it tests whether there is a knowledge gap in retrospective voting on the party level. Using the data of the Icelandic National Election Study (ICENES), support is found for the argument that mechanisms of electoral accountability work both for incumbent and opposition parties. Second, while previous research raised doubts on the electorate’s ability to hold governments accountable, there is no evidence of a knowledge gap in retrospective voting on the party level.

Judicial Review in Troubled Times: Stabilizing Democracy in a Second Best World

Debates over the role of judicial review in a constitutional democracy gravitate to one of two poles. Either the debates are framed in terms of the power of courts countering the outputs of a well-ordered legislative process, or they are framed in terms of the dominant rights commands of minorities ever vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority. This Article parts company with the customary debate in two ways. First, the inquiry focuses on the structures of democratic governance rather than the relation between a governing majority and the rights of disfavored individuals or minorities. Second, and contrary to the conditions assumed by critics of judicial review such as Jeremy Waldron and Richard Bellamy, the aim here is to look directly to the “contaminated” domain of our lived experience in the moment rather than an idealized vision of well-ordered parliamentary sovereignty. Especially in a time of populist challenges to the institutionalization of democratic politics, the role of constitutional courts as potential brakes on the politics of immediacy takes on greater and greater significance. Relying on examples from jurisdictions around the world, this Article sets out three types of interventions ranging in terms of how problematic they are for democratic governance. First is the use of constitutional review to prevent entrenched officeholders from undermining their electoral accountability, as seen in places are far removed as Taiwan and North Carolina. The second is the role of court interventions to bolster what is termed the “soft power” of democracy in which institutional norms compel a politics of negotiation and compromise. Finally, there is the temptation for courts to substitute judicial authority for failing state competence of democracies in general, and of the legislative branches in particular. In each case, judicial review is examined to determine to what extent the judiciary can serve as an institutional buffer in protecting democracy against systemic failure, sometimes on matters that may pertain to fundamental liberties, but more often on questions of the exercise of governmental authority. The question here is whether in times of challenge to democratic functioning the judiciary may play a stabilizing role in warding off temporary political expedients that threaten governmental integrity. The term “stabilization” invokes the role of a central banker charged with maintaining fiscal integrity in the face of inevitable partisan demands for unsustainable short-term returns. In turn, the inquiry is whether judicial interventions in defense of the structural integrity of democratic rule can be thought in similar terms of conservatorship by a semi-independent entity and, in turn, how this institutional role of the judiciary might be utilized in times of systemic stress.

Preventing Prevention

AbstractPreventing climate change and damage from natural disasters typically requires policies with up‐front costs that promise a flow of benefits over time. Why has obtaining such policies in a competitive electoral democracy proved so intractable? We develop a formal model of electoral accountability in this context, in which politicians have private information about their motivations. The model shows why fully rational voters, though certain that incumbents spend less on disaster prevention than is good for them, reelect incumbents at very high rates. In addition, in such equilibria, voters would punish incumbents who spent more on disaster prevention. This equilibrium is consistent with (and implies) some of the major empirical regularities observed in the literature on voting and disaster prevention. We discuss some implications of our analysis for advancing public debates about disaster and climate change mitigation.

A STRUCTURAL MODEL OF ELECTORAL ACCOUNTABILITY

AbstractThis article proposes a structural approach to measuring the effects of electoral accountability. We estimate a political agency model with imperfect information in order to identify and quantify discipline and selection effects, using data on U.S. governors. We find that the possibility of reelection provides a significant incentive for incumbents to exert effort, that is, a disciplining effect. We also find a positive but weaker selection effect. According to our model, the widely used two‐term regime improves voter welfare by 4.2% compared to a one‐term regime, and better voter information about the effort of the governors would further increase voter welfare by up to 0.5%.

Government Partisanship and Electoral Accountability: The Effect of Perceived Employment Situation on Partisan Vote Switching

What are the electoral impacts of perceptions of unemployment under different partisan persuasions of the government? Neither the literature on retrospective economic voting nor partisan voting has provided a compelling answer to this question. This paper addresses this puzzle by analyzing panel surveys and leveraging differences in government partisanship in two consecutive elections. I argue that negative evaluations of the employment situation induce voter transition to support a left-wing party under a right-wing government, but that such voter perceptions do not affect vote choice under a left-wing government. An analysis of a voter transition, using British Election Panel Study 1992–1997 and 1997–2001, reveals findings that support my argument. My argument suggests conditional partisan voting effects. Essentially, the effect of economic issues on vote choice is conditional on issue salience and which party “owns” the issue, namely, the varying levels of issue salience related to government partisanship.

Escaping collective responsibility in fluid party systems: Evidence from South Korea

How does the public evaluate politicians' reactions to crises that damage their party's image? Using an experimental survey design and the 2016 South Korean political scandal, we explore which strategies allow politicians to avoid electoral accountability for corruption in their party. The scandal prompted some politicians from the president's party to participate in protests calling for her impeachment, make statements criticizing her leadership, or join a new splinter party. We find that all of these strategies both increase electoral support and decrease perceptions of corruption. However, leaving the party is the least successful at increasing electability and politicians are more likely to gain votes if instead they take a clear position against corrupt politicians. Our findings have implications for accountability in weakly institutionalized party systems, where politicians, faced with a party brand crisis, have incentives to switch parties to escape electoral consequences, as opposed to reforming the party from within.

Imperfect Recall: The Politics of Subnational Office Removals

Why do some citizens remove the same politicians that they elected from office? This article examines the use of recall referenda, an increasingly prevalent process in which citizens organize a vote to remove politicians from office before they complete their terms. Although celebrated as a tool to improve electoral accountability, we argue that recall referenda are organized to pursue political vendettas. We test this claim using an original data set on the different stages leading to subnational recalls in Peru. Recalls are initiated more often when politicians lose by narrow vote margins and when women hold office. Once put to a vote, citizens do use office performance to decide whether to retain their politicians. Losing politicians organized fewer recall referenda following an institutional reform that allowed politicians to name their successors. The implication is that recall referenda create weak incentives to improve office performance, but careful institutional design can improve their functioning.

Receiving Foreign Aid Can Reduce Support for Incumbent Presidents

Foreign aid is thought to be useful, and therefore desirable, to recipient governments because it allows them to increase their support through the provision of goods or services. However, the effect of the provision of aid on vote choice has rarely been directly tested. I examine the effect of receiving foreign aid on incumbent electoral support in three African countries using a spatial difference in differences design. Surprisingly, receiving aid lowers support for incumbent presidents. I test two mechanisms that could produce this result and find support for a mechanism where aid reduces one’s opinion of the incumbent, perhaps because aid does not live up to expectations. I discuss the implications of this result for research on the political effects of foreign aid and electoral accountability.

Electoral Accountability, Responsibility Attributions, and the Democratic Deficit in Devolved Wales

Abstract This study explores electoral accountability at the devolved level in Wales. The retrospective voting model assumes that electoral accountability requires that citizens assign responsibility accurately and vote on the basis of their evaluation of government performance. Drawing on data from the 2016 Welsh Election Study, we examine whether citizens in Wales can identify devolved policy competences and office holders, and identify factors that are linked to accurate attributions. We then examine whether voters seek to use devolved elections as a sanctioning tool, even if they do not have the information required to do so accurately. The findings indicate that there is an acute accountability deficit at the devolved level in Wales: few have the knowledge or the inclination to hold those in power to account. The conclusion discusses the implications of these findings for democracy in Wales and in other multi-level settings.

Electoral incentives to combat mosquito-borne illnesses: Experimental evidence from Brazil.

Mosquito-borne illnesses present significant health challenges to the developing world. If citizens are informed about their government's efforts to combat these diseases, will they reward incumbents who have performed well and punish those who have done poorly at this task? Electoral sanctioning requires that combatting disease be a sufficiently salient concern, which, in turn, is likely to depend upon subjective perceptions of the risks posed by particular illnesses. Epidemics typically prompt stronger risk perceptions than endemic diseases, but where both types circulate jointly, the more familiar endemic disease may determine public reactions. The salience of health threats also varies among individuals; those with a self-interest in prevention or a personal connection to the effects of mosquito-borne illnesses may react more strongly. This study presents the results of a face-to-face survey experiment in Pernambuco, Brazil, informing subjects about their mayor's use of federal funds to combat mosquito-borne illnesses such as dengue (an endemic disease) and Zika and chikungunya (both epidemics). We examine the effect of this information on intended vote for the mayor's reelection. For the full sample, the treatment has no significant effect. However, we find a large and significant punishment effect among voters who know someone affected by microcephaly or the Zika virus. Drawing on survey and focus group evidence, we argue that most voters fail to act upon our treatment information because mosquito control is a low-salience concern primarily associated with endemic rather than epidemic diseases. Our study constitutes the first experimental evidence as to whether informing citizens about government public health efforts affects voting behavior. Our results suggests that, where similar epidemic and endemic diseases circulate together, informational campaigns aiming to induce electoral accountability should also seek to boost the salience of the information by educating the public about the difference between familiar and newer threats.