Government Popularity Research Articles

Economic conditions and government popularity in Great Britain, 1956?1983

This paper investigates the temporal structure of the effects of economic conditions on voting intentions. It argues that different specifications will be appropriate depending on the ways in which voters receive information on economic conditions. For the data used here, the specification used in nearly all previous research—the geometric distributed lag—performs less well than alternatives, and the choice significantly affects model stability and the significance of particular independent variables. The results suggest several conclusions about voters' knowledge and rationality, which may be tested with individual level data.

Government Popularity in Great Britain under Conditions of Economic Decline

Government Popularity in Great Britain under Conditions of Economic Decline

The Relationship Between Government Popularity and Approval for the Government's Record in the United Kingdom

The past decade has seen the growth of a considerable literature on the link between government popularity, as reflected by the proportion of the public indicating their intention to vote for the government in opinion polls, and the state of the economy, as represented by certain key variables. The work began in the early 1970s with articles by Goodhart and Bhansali, Mueller, and Kramer. It continued through the decade; some of the more recent contributions can be found in a set of readings edited by Hibbs and Fassbender. However, despite the amount and quality of this work, problems remain. Principal amongst these, as Chrystal and Alt have pointed out, is the inability to estimate a relationship which exhibits any degree of stability either over time or between researchers. Nearly all the studies have been successful in finding a significant relationship for specific time periods, but when these are extended, or when the function is used to forecast outside the original estimation period, the relationship appears to break down.

Government Popularity and the Unemployment Issue, 1966-1983

Sociologists have neglected the implications for their subject of the various factors that determine the level of popularity of governments. Whether the rate of unemployment, for example, is related to government popularity may sometimes be an indicator of the existence of `communalism' in a society. For three of the four full-term or near-full-term governments since 1966 the rate of unemployment has been a predictor of month-by-month government popularity, as measured by the Gallup Poll; the exception was the period of Labour government between 1974 and 1979. The relationship between the unemployment rate and government popularity before 1974 is interpreted as indicating the existence of a degree of social communalism. This was eroded by events between 1974 and 1979. However, it is unlikely that the re-emergence of the unemployment rate as a predictor of government popularity since 1979 is to be explained by a revival of communalism; rather, it shows that the current high levels of unemployment are having direct political effects in a now substantial proportion of the electorate who are personally or vicariously affected.

The principle of political-economic assignment

This paper formulates a macroeconomic model of disposable income, unemployment, inflation, and the balance of payments; a theory of qualitative choice to explain government popularity in terms of these variables; and a satisficing formulation of political-economic policy. This approach to economic policy relies on the promotion of ideology and satisficing popularity and gives rise to an interdependent system of political-economic reaction functions for the tax rate and state spending. Using a theorem for the stability of “patched-up” systems, the principle of political-economic assignment is derived.

Inflation, unemployment and government popularity—Dynamic models for the United States, Britain and West Germany

There has been numerous attempts to model the relationship between unemployment, inflation, other economic variables and government popularity in a variety of industrial countries. However, there is conflicting evidence about the magnitude and significance of effects both between different countries, and within the same country at different points of time. The purpose of this article is to examine the existing literature, to provide a critique of the theoretical and statistical validity of many existing studies, and to specify and estimate a dynamic model of the relationship between inflation, unemployment and government popularity in three countries over the post-war period. This model is a multivariate transfer function with an autoregressive-moving average error structure which has been developed in its general form by Box and Jenkins. The results demonstrate significant relationships between inflation, unemployment and government popularity, but relationships which are relatively weak and unstable over time.

‘Popularity Functions’ and the Role of the Media: A Pilot Study of the Popular Press

It is widely supposed that the level of popular support for governments depends on those governments' success in handling the economy. Some recent studies have attempted to test this idea by estimating the statistical relationship between the government's popularity in the opinion polls and various indicators of the state of the economy such as unemployment rates, inflation rates, growth rates and so on. A general finding of these studies is that popularity is significantly correlated with all these indicators of the standard of living. All of them, however, operate on the assumption that the voters behave as if they had perfect knowledge of the state of the economy as set out for example by the Government Statistical Service. Whether this assumption does, in fact, approximate to the truth will, however, depend in large part on how the popular media present economic trends and economic relationships to their public. If there are gaps and biases in the information which is presented to many voters, then those voters will be responding to a picture of the economy which may differ dramatically from the picture offered by publications such as Economic Trends and the government will be selling its policies in a highly imperfect market. The purpose of this paper is to mount a preliminary investigation into the picture of the economy which has been presented by one important medium of communication, namely mass-circulation newspapers. The aim is to show how firstly the scope and secondly the interpretation of the economic data presented by the popular press developed over the period 1960–80. The limitations of this method should be spelled out. We are not considering all the sources from which people derive information about the economy (personal communications, radio, television, newspapers), but only the last and possibly the most partisan of these. This Note offers, therefore, in no sense ‘the ordinary man in the street's perception of the economy’ but simply the picture of the economy which one influential medium of communication presented.

Macroeconomic Performance and Government Popularity in New Zealand

This article empirically investigates the effects of macroeconomic variables on the popularity of the New Zealand government by testing various popularity functions for the period 1970-1981. The results unambiguously show that the existence of this important politico-economic relationship cannot be doubted. In particular, the empirical results suggest that New Zealand voters are (1) forward-looking rather than backward-looking, (2) capable of comparing the actual macroeconomic condition with some notion of a variable “normal” performance, and (3) well aware of the openness of their economy.

The Principle of Polictical-Economic Assignment: Analysis of a Macro-Economic Model with Political Feedbacks

This paper formulates a medium-term macroeconomic model of disposable income, unemployment, inflation and the balance of payments, proposes a theory of qualitative choice to explain government popularity in terms of these variables and develops a satisficing formulation of political-economic policy. This approach to economic policy relies on the promotion of ideology and satisficing popularity and gives rise to an interdependent system of political-economic reaction functions for the tax rate and state spending. Using a theorem for the stability of “patched-up” systems, the principle of political-economic assignment is derived and the stability (instability) of a left-wing (right-wing) system of reaction functions is proved. The paper concludes with some implications for the orthodox theory of economic policy.

An Empirical Study of Politico-Economic Interaction in the United States: A Reply

N modern society, where government has assumed a major role in economic affairs and where the electorate has made it increasingly responsible for material well-being, it has become important to analyse the interaction between economic and political systems. Government should no longer be regarded as exogenous to the economic system. This is particularly the case with respect to econometric model building. As some authors have noted, an econometric model may be subject to serious misspecification if an endogenous variable (such as government expenditure) is treated as if it were exogenous.' The study of politico-economic interdependence also has important consequences for forecasting. As the future course of economic events is strongly dependent on government action, existing macroeconometric models that regard government as exogenous are of limited use for prediction. Furthermore, economic policy advice is often unsuccessful because it does not take political repercussions into account. A deflationary policy, for example, will hardly be adopted by a government just before an election because it carries with it a high risk of leading to government's losing the election. Politicoeconometric modelling helps economists concerned with government advising to advance proposals that have a reasonable chance of being put into action. This study puts forward some simple theoretical hypotheses concerning the nature of the interrelationship between the economy and the polity, particularly with respect to (central) government. The basic relationships are reflected in the popularity function, which describes the impact of economic conditions on government popularity; and in the reaction function, which shows how government uses policy instruments to steer the economy in a desired direction. These relationships are econometrically tested with quarterly data for the United States for the period 1953-1975. In the model both voters and government are assumed to be utility maximizers, and government's behavior is restricted by various economic, political and administrative constraints. The analysis shows that the government's (or in the case here dealt with, the president's) popularity is significantly reduced when the rate of unemployment and/or of inflation rises, and that it is significantly increased when the growth rate of private consumption rises. Government reacts to changes in its popularity because this is taken as an indicator of future electoral outcome. When popularity is low, it tries to steer the economy so as to increase its re-election chances; when popularity is high enough, it can afford to pursue ideologicallyoriented policies, which need not always be popular with the electorate. There have been a number of papers that have dealt with the influence of economic variables on election outcomes and on government popularity, most of which are unsatisfactory on theoretical and statistical grounds. There are, on the other hand, only a few that have been concerned with government reaction functions. Moreover, these studies have been either apolitical and interested only in the implied weights of a welfare function (e.g., Friedlaender, 1973); or they have related to only a particular section of the economy (e.g., Received for publication June 14, 1976. Revision accepted for publication November 30, 1976. * University of Zurich. A first version of this paper was written during a stay at the Cowles Foundation, Yale University. It was revised in the light of comments received when it was presented at the Cowles Foundation Seminar and at seminars at Princeton University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Center for Study of Public Choice, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The authors are especially grateful to A. S. Blinder, J. M. Buchanan, R. C. Fair, G. M. Heal, D. F. Hendry, C. Goodrich, G. H. Kramer, G. Kirchgaessner, D. MacRae, W. D. Nordhaus, W. E. Oates, E. R. Tufte, G. Tullock, R. Wagner, and to the anonymous referees. ' See Crotty (1973), Goldfeld and Blinder (1972), Blinder and Solow (1974, pp. 69-77).

British Government Popularity and Economic Performance: A Comment

British Government Popularity and Economic Performance: A Comment

British Government Popularity and Economic Performance

British Government Popularity and Economic Performance

Politico‐Economic Interactions in Australia:Some Empirical Evidence*

A politico‐economic model for the Australian government is developed. based on some simple theoretical hypotheses concerning the interrelationship between the economy and polity. The popularity function describes the first link between the state of the economy and the voters' behaviour. It is shown that under correct specification, which includes both economic and political factors, unemployment and infldtion have a sizeable quantitative influence on government popularity. The second major link is described by the policy function. There it is shown that due to the short legislative period, the Australian government's efforts are permanently directed to securing re‐election as its most major goal.

Presidential Performance the Economy, and the Public's Evaluation of Economic Conditions

Previous articleNext article No AccessArticlesPresidential Performance the Economy, and the Public's Evaluation of Economic ConditionsRobert Y. Shapiro and Bruce M. ConfortoRobert Y. Shapiro Search for more articles by this author and Bruce M. Conforto Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 42, Number 1Feb., 1980 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2130013 Views: 29Total views on this site Citations: 19Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1979 Southern Political Science AssociationPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Yang Liu, Ivan Shaliastovich Government policy approval and exchange rates, Journal of Financial Economics 143, no.11 (Jan 2022): 303–331.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.06.031Chaekwang You, Wonjae Kim LOSS AVERSION AND RISK-SEEKING IN KOREA–JAPAN RELATIONS, Journal of East Asian Studies 20, no.11 (Feb 2020): 53–74.https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2019.36Marta Neüff Words of Crisis as Words of Power, 77 (May 2018).https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.77 Sangjoon Ka Characteristics of Approval Ratings of President Roh Moo-hyun, 21st centry Political Science Review 22, no.22 (Sep 2012): 28–50.https://doi.org/10.17937/topsr.22.2.201209.28 장승진 역대 선거 후 설문조사자료를 통해 본 제18대 대통령 선거 전망, JOURNAL OF FUTURE POLITICS 2, no.11 (Feb 2012): 85–103.https://doi.org/10.20973/jofp.2012.2.1.85Chris J. Dolan, John Frendreis, Raymond Tatalovich A Presidential Economic Scorecard: Performance and Perception, PS: Political Science & Politics 42, no.0404 (Sep 2009): 689–694.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096509990011Joe Schwartz, Scott Hoover, Adam Schwartz The political advantage of a volatile market: the relationship between Presidential popularity and the ‘investor fear gauge’, Journal of Public Affairs 8, no.33 (Aug 2008): 195–207.https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.291Jana Morgan KellyJana Morgan Kelly is a Ph.D. candidate in political science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3265. Counting on the Past or Investing in the Future? Economic and Political Accountability in Fujimori's Peru, The Journal of Politics 65, no.33 (Jul 2015): 864–880.https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2508.00216Sungdai Cho, Garry Young The Asymmetric Impact of Inflation on Presidential Approval, Politics & Policy 30, no.33 (Sep 2002): 401–430.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2002.tb00128.xRobert J. Blendon, John M Benson, Mollyann Brodie, Richard Morin, Drew E Altman, Daniel Gitterman, Mario Brossard, Matt James Bridging the Gap Between the Public's and Economists' Views of the Economy, Journal of Economic Perspectives 11, no.33 (Aug 1997): 105–118.https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.11.3.105Robert K. Goidel, Ronald E. Langley Media Coverage of the Economy and Aggregate Economic Evaluations: Uncovering Evidence of Indirect Media Effects, Political Research Quarterly 48, no.22 (Jul 2016): 313–328.https://doi.org/10.1177/106591299504800205Robert H. Durr What Moves Policy Sentiment?, American Political Science Review 87, no.11 (Sep 2013): 158–170.https://doi.org/10.2307/2938963Michael B. MacKuen, Robert S. Erikson, James A. Stimson Peasants or Bankers? The American Electorate and the U.S. Economy, American Political Science Review 86, no.33 (Sep 2013): 597–611.https://doi.org/10.2307/1964124Lyn Ragsdale Strong feelings: Emotional responses to presidents, Political Behavior 13, no.11 (Mar 1991): 33–65.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00996998David J. Smyth, Pami Dua The public's indifference map between inflation and unemployment: Empirical evidence for the Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan presidencies, Public Choice 60, no.11 (Jan 1989): 71–85.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00124313T. Yantek Government Popularity in Great Britain under Conditions of Economic Decline, Political Studies 33, no.33 (Sep 1985): 467–483.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1985.tb01156.xLyn Ragsdale The Politics of Presidential Speechmaking, 1949-1980, American Political Science Review 78, no.44 (Aug 2014): 971–984.https://doi.org/10.2307/1955802Kristen R. Monroe, Dona Metcalf Laughlin Economic influences on presidential popularity among key political and socioeconomic groups: A review of the evidence and some new findings, Political Behavior 5, no.33 (Jan 1983): 309–345.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00988580Kristen R. Monroe ?God of vengeance and of reward??: The economy and presidential popularity, Political Behavior 1, no.44 (Jan 1979): 301–329.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00989807

The Effect of Unemployment, Inflation and Real Income Growth on Government Popularity in Sweden

The Effect of Unemployment, Inflation and Real Income Growth on Government Popularity in Sweden

The Impact of Economic Conditions on Presidential Popularity

THIS RESEARCH NOTE presents some preliminary considerations building toward a theory of presidential popularity as it explores the possible impact of economic conditions on the popularity of chief executives from Eisenhower to Nixon. It does not treat other forces such as war, corruption, and domestic violence, and is meant to be suggestive, not definitive. More specifically, it is concerned with the choice and measurement of economic variables to be used, if any. In the most systematic and imaginative study of presidential popularity to date, John E. Mueller examined economic slump (in percentage unemployed) as one of four explanatory variables along with coalition-of-minorities, rally-round-the-flag, and war in a

The Effects of Economic Policies on Votes for the Presidency: Some Evidence from Recent Elections

THREE strands of thought and conjecture contribute to the belief that economic conditions play an important, and perhaps decisive role in elections. Recent theories of rational voting behavior-Buchanan and Tullock' or Riker and Ordeshook2 are examples-treat votes and voting as the outcome of a rational calculation of marginal costs and benefits. Prosperity, rising real income and increased employment may, in this framework, yield benefits to the individual that can be translated into votes for the party or candidate. Related, yet distinct, is the growing body of conjectures about a "political business cycle." High employment and low inflation in election years are followed by anti-inflation policies that temporarily lower employment and the rate of inflation in succeeding years. These policies work gradually and are replaced by policies to stimulate the economy, so the candidate or party can boast of prosperity and lower inflation at the next election. The conjecture arises also from casual and impressionistic evidence and from some studies of voting. Perhaps the most widely cited recent example is the Kennedy-Nixon election of 1960 when a small plurality and rising unemployment seemed to support the conjecture. Econometric studies of voting behavior provide, at most, mixed support. Most of the evidence comes from time series studies of Congressional elections. Kramer, Stigler, and Arcelus and Meltzer used different methods and reached different conclusions.3

The Electoral Cycle and the Asymmetry of Government and Opposition Popularity: An Alternative Model of the Relationship between Economic Conditions and Political Popularity

The Electoral Cycle and the Asymmetry of Government and Opposition Popularity: An Alternative Model of the Relationship between Economic Conditions and Political Popularity