Electoral Advantage Research Articles

When incumbents can only gain: economic voting in local government elections in Poland

This paper studies valence economic voting in municipal elections in Poland, a country characterised by a high degree of decentralisation of the provision of crucial public goods and services. The analysis yields four conclusions. First, municipalities’ expenditures per capita have a positive effect on incumbent executive officials’ electoral fortunes. Second, electoral budget cycles are relevant, incumbent candidates benefiting from a potential election-year boost in a municipality’s spending. Third, the aforementioned effects of a short-term increase in expenditures are much stronger in the case of the largest national party, thereby pointing to the presence of multi-level influences on citizens’ propensity to vote economically. Finally, incumbents enjoy a substantial electoral advantage even in the municipalities that spend relatively little, an observation suggesting that the advantage is founded largely on factors other than economic voting effects.

The electoral advantage of the left in times of fiscal adjustment

Despite widely held views on fiscal adjustment as a political minefield for government parties, the empirical literature on the issue has been surprisingly inconclusive. A crucial variable that has been often overlooked in the debate is partisan politics. Building on the micro-logic of Albert Hirschman’s ‘exit, voice, and loyalty’ framework, this article offers a novel theoretical perspective on the conditioning impact of partisan government in the electoral arena. Due to their more limited exit options at their disposal, left-wing voters are less likely to inflict electoral punishment on their parties, offering the latter an electoral advantage over their right-wing rivals. Relying on the largest cross-national data set to date on the evolution of close to 100 parties’ popularity ratings in 21 democracies, time-series–cross-section results confirm this electoral advantage. Somewhat paradoxically, while center-right government parties systematically lose popularity in years of fiscal adjustment, no such regularity is found for left-leaning incumbents.

Climbing the ranks: incumbency effects in party-list systems

Incumbents tend to have a solid electoral advantage in candidate-centered electoral settings. Do similar incumbency effects exist in more party-centered environments? We estimate incumbency effects in an open-list proportional representation system, exploiting that seats are first allocated across parties, and then to candidates within party lists. Using data from Norwegian local elections 2003–2015, we document that a candidate that barely wins a seat in the local council has about a 9 percentage points (43%) higher probability of being elected in the next election compared to a candidate that just misses out on a seat on the same party list. We find no evidence that voters contribute to this personal incumbency advantage. Rather, it seems as if party elites are instrumental in securing the electoral success of their party affiliates. We show that incumbents and non-incumbents run again in the subsequent election at about equal rates, but that incumbents tend to advance in the party hierarchy and obtain safer ballot positions in future elections, which is what ultimately leads to electoral success.

Vote buying and campaign promises

What explains the wide variation across countries in the use of vote buying and policy promises during election campaigns? We address this question, and account for a number of stylized facts and apparent anomalies regarding vote buying, using a model in which parties cannot fully commit to campaign promises. We find that high vote buying is associated with frequent reneging on campaign promises, strong electoral competition, and high policy rents. Frequent reneging and low party competence reduce campaign promises. If vote buying can be financed out of public resources, incumbents buy more votes and enjoy an electoral advantage, but they also promise more public goods. Vote buying has distributional consequences: voters targeted with vote buying pre-election may receive no government benefits post-election. The results point to obstacles to the democratic transition from clientelist to programmatic forms of electoral competition: parties may not benefit electorally from institutions that increase commitment.

Les députés et les partis politiques sortants profitent-ils d'un avantage électoral ? Une analyse des résultats électoraux au Québec

AbstractUsing official electoral results from provincial elections since 1973, we evaluate the incumbency effect in Quebec by measuring the impact of a combination of characteristics related to candidates and political parties. We verify whether the presence of an incumbent candidate is necessary to ensure that the incumbent party benefits from an electoral advantage. We also compare the magnitude of the incumbency effect between governing and opposition parties. Making use of parametric multivariate statistical tools, we conclude that political parties benefit from an electoral advantage in Quebec. Except for ministers who make a small difference, simple Members of the National Assembly (MNAs) do not improve their electoral performance, while in some cases new candidates with incumbent parties perform better.

The Age of Anxiety: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy in a Post-Hegemonic Global Order

The crisis of liberal democracy is closely associated with major global shifts, which have been accelerated by the global financial crisis of 2008, with its dislocating effects in the established democracies of the global centre. Relative stagnation and rising problems of inequality and unemployment, coupled with additional shocks in the form of mass migration and terrorist attacks have generated fertile grounds for the rise of right-wing radical populist sentiments, which have been turned into electoral advantage by charismatic leaders. The crisis of liberal democracy is also a global phenomenon in the sense that liberal democracy has been severely challenged by the rise of strategic models of capitalism, notably its authoritarian version represented by the growing power and influence of the China-Russia coalition. Indeed, the success of the latter has served as a kind of reference for many authoritarian or hybrid regimes in a changing global context, at a time when the key Western powers appear to be losing their previous economic and moral appeal.

Does Exposure to Stereotype‐Disconfirming Politicians Reduce the Effect of Stereotypes on Voting? Evidence From Seven Plagiarism Scandals in Germany

We examine whether exposure to several salient counterexamples reduces the effect of stereotypes on voting. By taking advantage of a series of seven plagiarism scandals in Germany—a country with high regard for academic credentials where academic titles (Dr. and Prof.) get printed on ballot papers—we test whether the tendency to vote for candidates with a doctor's title decreased in the wake of the scandals. Using cross‐sectional and longitudinal estimators and controlling for a large range of potential confounders, we find that the electoral advantage of candidates with a doctor's title shrinks from a good half of a percentage point before the scandals down to a third after the scandals. In line with a subtyping hypothesis, the reduction is stronger for candidates from traditional middle‐class parties (i.e., the parties of the politicians who were implicated in the scandals). Neither of these effects turns out to be strong enough to reach statistical significance, however. We conclude that seven negative examples in one legislative term had no noticeable effect on the tendency to select candidates based on academic titles. Our study provides a rare opportunity to test the effect of stereotype‐disconfirming information on electoral behavior. Our results contribute to a literature demonstrating the resilience of stereotypes to disconfirming information. They also suggest that plagiarism affairs are unlikely to reduce electoral incentives for politicians to obtain a fake doctorate.

The incumbency disadvantage in South Korean National Assembly elections: Evidence from a regression discontinuity approach

In marked contrast to the findings from advanced democracies that incumbent office holders enjoy electoral advantages, this study finds that a substantial incumbency disadvantage exists in South Korean National Assembly (KNA) elections. I employ a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity design to distinguish the true effects of incumbency from the selection effects associated with candidate qualities, such as charisma and ability levels. My results show that serving a term in office reduces the probability of winning by around 20–30 percentage points and reduces the vote share by about 3–7 percentage points. Possible reasons for the incumbency disadvantage are briefly discussed, with an emphasis on the particularly high level of public discontent with governing elites in the KNA due to what voters perceive to be their widespread corruption.

No Love for Doves? Foreign Policy and Candidate Appeal

Objectives“Issue ownership” of foreign policy, it is widely believed, gives an electoral advantage to the Republican Party, which generally adopts a hawkish posture. We test the popular proposition that Democrats should adopt more hawkish stances in order to offset this advantage.MethodsWe conducted experiments in which (fictional) candidates take hawkish or dovish positions in response to a real‐world threat to the United States. We complemented these studies with analyses of national survey data for the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.ResultsOur results consistently refute the popular proposition that Democrats stand to benefit from adopting more hawkish foreign policy stances.ConclusionWhile ownership of foreign policy may bestow a trust on the Republican Party to handle foreign policy, this is not necessarily a mandate for hawkish policies. We highlight the importance of the present political context, wherein the American public exhibits a marked weariness of U.S. military intervention overseas.

Physical attractiveness, voter heuristics and electoral systems: The role of candidate attractiveness under different institutional designs

While existing studies have shown that more attractive candidates running for office have an electoral advantage, very little has been written on how this advantage relates to different institutions. We theorise that formal institutions mediate the positive effect from which attractive candidates benefit. More in detail, we focus on the type of electoral system, hypothesising that physical attractiveness plays a more important role in majoritarian, first-past-the-post systems than in list proportional systems. We test this stipulation using the German federal elections’ two-tier electoral system, together with data collected in Australia on the physical attractiveness of German federal election candidates in 2013. A series of bivariate and multivariate statistics show that physical attractiveness is a significant factor explaining a candidate’s likelihood to win in the FPTP tier, but not in the list proportional representation (PR) tier.

The Political Economy of Fiscal Transparency and Independent Fiscal Councils

The global surge in independent fiscal councils (IFCs) raises three related questions: How can IFCs improve the conduct of fiscal policy? Are they simultaneously desirable for voters and elected policymakers? And are they resilient to changes in political conditions? We build a model in which voters cannot observe the true competence of elected policymakers. IFCs’ role is to mitigate this imperfection. Equilibrium public debt is excessive because policymakers are “partisan” and “opportunistic.” If voters only care about policymakers’ competence, both the incumbent and the voters would be better off with an IFC as the debt bias would shrink. However, when other considerations eclipse competence and give the incumbent a strong electoral advantage or disadvantage, setting up an IFC may be counterproductive as the debt bias would increase. If the incumbent holds a moderate electoral advantage or disadvantage, voters would prefer an IFC, but an incumbent with a large advantage may prefer not to have an IFC. The main policy implications are that (i) establishing an IFC can only lower the debt bias if voters care sufficiently about policymakers’ competence; (ii) not all political environments are conducive to the emergence of IFCs; and (iii) IFCs are consequently vulnerable to shifts in political conditions.

The Political Economy of Fiscal Transparency and Independent Fiscal Councils

The global surge in independent fiscal councils (IFCs) raises three related questions: How can IFCs improve the conduct of fiscal policy? Are they simultaneously desirable for voters and elected policymakers? And are they resilient to changes in political conditions? We build a model in which voters cannot observe the true competence of elected policymakers. IFCs' role is to mitigate this imperfection. Equilibrium public debt is excessive because policymakers are 'partisan' and 'opportunistic.' If voters only care about policymakers' competence, both the incumbent and the voters would be better off with an IFC as the debt bias would shrink. However, when other considerations eclipse competence and give the incumbent a strong electoral advantage or disadvantage, setting up an IFC may be counterproductive as the debt bias would increase. If the incumbent holds a moderate electoral advantage or disadvantage, voters would prefer an IFC, but an incumbent with a large advantage may prefer not to have an IFC. The main policy implications are that (i) establishing an IFC can only lower the debt bias if voters care sufficiently about policymakers' competence; (ii) not all political environments are conducive to the emergence of IFCs; and (iii) IFCs are consequently vulnerable to shifts in political conditions.

An Agenda-Setting Theory of Electoral Competition

The strategy of parties regarding which issues to emphasize during electoral campaigns is an important aspect of electoral competition. In this article, we advance research on electoral competition by developing a multidimensional model of electoral competition in which parties compete for electoral support by raising the electoral salience of position issues. We show that parties have incentives to advertise an issue on which the opponent has a more popular position or an issue on which neither party has electoral advantage. We also show that the party with the lower equilibrium vote share prefers to emphasize more controversial issues, while the party with the higher equilibrium vote share prefers to emphasize more consensual issues on its electoral agenda. The analysis provides a theoretical foundation for moving toward a more complete understanding of the content of campaign communication on issues on which voters disagree about which policies ought to be implemented. It also provides novel empirical predictions about how the structure of public opinion impacts the campaign strategy of parties, which can foster further empirical research on electoral campaigns and issue selection.

WHAT CAUSES PATRONAGE REFORM? IT DEPENDS ON THE TYPE OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

Public employment in most developing countries is governed by political patronage. Patronage provides many incumbents with governability and electoral advantage. What causes governments to forsake patronage in favour of civil service reform? This article reviews scholarly explanations. It finds that studies usefully identify diverse socioeconomic and political‐institutional factors which can affect reform incentives. The causal effects of these factors – their weight, mechanisms and signs – are contested, however. This article partially resolves this contestation by considering which reform studies explain: different bureaucratic structures develop asynchronously and feature different determinants. To illustrate, political competition is argued to incentivize reform to ‘blanket in’ party appointees; or do the opposite by reducing expectations to reap longer‐term state capacity benefits. Yet, ‘blanketing in’ necessitates bureaucratic job stability, while state capacity requires merit recruitment of skilled bureaucrats – two poorly correlated reforms. The causes of patronage reform thus depend on the type of civil service reform.

Running on character? Running on policy? An analysis of Japanese candidates' campaign platforms

We present theoretical and empirical analyses of candidates' platforms in the 2003 and 2009 Japanese House of Representatives elections, in an effort to understand candidates' strategic decisions to emphasize policy debates and to highlight their character-based qualities. Our study highlights the significance of comparative electoral advantages that motivate differing strategies between candidates from different parties, between candidates competing in rural versus urban districts, and between candidates contesting the 2003 versus the 2009 elections. Our study contributes to the growing literature that jointly analyzes politicians' policy-based vote-seeking strategies versus electoral appeals based on valence-related attributes such as competence, integrity, and leadership ability, that may appeal to voters because they enhance winning candidates’ performance in office.

Electoral bias at the 2015 general election: reducing Labour’s electoral advantage

ABSTRACTElectoral bias results in an asymmetrical seat distribution between parties with similar vote shares. Over recent British general elections Labour held an advantage because it efficiently converted votes into seats. Following the 2015 election result this advantage has reduced considerably, principally because Labour’s vote distribution saw it accumulate more ineffective votes, particularly where electoral support was not converted into seats. By contrast, the vote distribution of the Conservative party is now superior to that of Labour because it acquired fewer wasted votes although Labour retains a modest advantage overall because it benefits from inequalities in electorate size and differences in voter turnout. Features of the 2015 election, however, raise general methodological challenges for decomposing electoral bias. The analysis, therefore, considers the effect of substituting the Liberal Democrats as the third party with the United Kingdom Independence Party. It also examines the outcome in Scotland separately from that in England and Wales. Following this analysis it becomes clear that the method for decomposing electoral bias requires clearer guidelines for its application in specific settings.

The fiscal benefits of repeated cooperation: coalitions and debt dynamics in 36 democracies

AbstractDo coalition governments really suffer from short time horizons in fiscal policymaking, as posited by standard political-economy models? This article focusses on coalitions that have created high levels of familiarity through shared governing experiences in the past and that are likely to cooperate again in future governing coalitions. I argue that such coalitions have incentives to internalise the future costs of debt accumulation and reach credible agreements to balance their constituencies’ fiscal preferences. Moreover, sustaining broad coalitions should have electoral advantages to implementing controversial economic reforms, thus resulting in lower debt increases compared not only with less durable coalitions but also with single-party governments. Comparing 36 economically advanced democracies between (up to) 1962 and 2013, I estimate the effects of coalitions’ cooperation prospects on the dynamics of public debt. The findings indicate that long time horizons can help coalitions to overcome intertemporal coordination problems and to reach specific policy goals.

Electoral Consequences of Lawmaking Activities for State Legislative Incumbents*

ObjectiveDo incumbent state legislators who introduce many bills or have high passage rates for their proposals receive an electoral benefit for these efforts? If so, where is such an electoral advantage manifested? Is it a direct effect whereby voters are more likely to recognize and reward a legislator's productivity? Or is the effect more indirect whereby potential candidates are less likely to challenge an active incumbent?MethodsThese questions are addressed in an analysis of legislative elections in 18 states over two election cycles.ResultsWithin the low‐information environment of state legislative elections, there is evidence of both direct and indirect effects of lawmaking activities. Higher rates of bill passage decrease the likelihood that incumbents are challenged in primaries. Bill passage also reduces the likelihood they face well‐financed opponents in the general election. Incumbents who introduce more legislation ultimately receive larger vote shares in general elections.ConclusionsIntroducing and passing legislation can enhance an incumbent's prospects for reelection.

Do Newspapers Benefit Incumbents?

Theories claim that news coverage is an important source of incumbency advantage, yet empirical evidence to support these claims is limited and inconclusive. To make progress, I exploit a unique shock to the media landscape in Denmark that occurred in the 19th century: The abolition of censorship in 1849 sparked a dramatic surge in the supply of local newspapers. I collect a new dataset on the more than 6500 candidates who ran for a parliamentary seat from 1849 to 1915, and I link it to constituency-level information on the complete universe of local Danish newspapers, as well as candidate-level information on coverage obtained from a database of several million scanned newspaper pages. I use a regression-discontinuity design to identify the incumbency advantage, and I exploit changes in local media markets to determine if this advantage is linked to emerging markets for local newspapers. The results indicate that incumbents enjoy privileged access to press coverage and that the electoral incumbency advantage more than doubles in the presence of local newspapers. The effect is more pronounced when said newspapers are politically connected to the party of the incumbent.

Regional Design, Local Autonomy, and Ethnic Struggle: Romania’s Syncopated Regionalisation

Despite many institutional features being changed during the post-communist transition, the regional administration in Romania witnessed a very limited change in post-communist times. Although it was a total political failure, the recent reshaping of the regional administration triggered a vivid public and scholarly interest on the matter. The purpose of the article is to shed new light on political constraints operating when it comes to reshaping regional design in Romania. Whereas official arguments pointed towards the necessity to address EU conditionality, the reshape was more likely underpinned by the government’s attempt to gain electoral advantages in the local elections scheduled for 2012. The decisive opposition made to the project by the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (Uniunea Democrată a Maghiarilor din Romania) reveals the importance that ethnic factors have played in this context.