Incumbency Effects Research Articles

Symposium: Switzerland's New Challenge – Governing After the 2015 Elections

Symposium: Switzerland's New Challenge – Governing After the 2015 Elections

Political Dynasties and the Incumbency Advantage in Party-Centered Environments

There is a growing literature on the phenomenon of dynasties in democracies, with most studies indicating a causal effect of incumbency on dynasty formation under candidate-centered electoral systems. In this study, we explore the relationship between the incumbency advantage and dynasties in the party-centered, closed-list proportional representation context of Norway. We use an original data set of all candidates in Norwegian parliamentary elections from 1945-2013, and apply a regression discontinuity design to evaluate both the incumbency advantage and the inherited incumbency advantage. We document that the incumbency advantage exists even in the party-centered environment of Norway. However, although we document a share of dynasties (7 percent) that is comparable to the United States, we find no evidence that incumbency has a causal effect on their formation. This finding suggests some form of internal party organizational network as a mechanism underlying dynastic politics that operates beyond the incumbency advantage.

The British Election Study 2015 general election constituency forecast

This paper develops a votes-to-seats nowcast model using individual level data from the British Election Study Internet panel to model the flow of the vote between 2010 and 2015. Transition matrices for each constituency are calculated using multinomial models of flows between 2010 origins and 2015 destinations. Respondents are reweighted to the polling average for England, Scotland and Wales and are further reweighted using predicted turnout to downweight respondents who are less likely to vote. The forecast performed poorly in 2015 because of polling errors and because the “Ashcroft” constituency vote intention question overestimated the Liberal Democrat incumbency effect. Without these errors, the forecast would have come much closer to the result but would still have underestimated the Conservatives' seats.

Do local elections predict the outcome of the next general election? Forecasting British general elections from local election national vote share estimates

This article outlines a method for forecasting British general elections from national level vote shares at local elections. Although local elections are notionally ‘local’, the evidence suggests that they at least partly mirror national electoral fortunes. A simple general election vote share on local election vote share regression model that accounts for partisan differences and incumbency effects fits past data with reasonable accuracy. Based on the results of the 2013 and 2014 local elections, the model forecast a 56% probability of hung parliament, with a 78% probability of the Conservatives receiving the largest share of the vote.

Incumbency Effects under Proportional Representation: Leaders and Backbenchers in the Postwar Italian Chamber of Deputies

We study incumbency effects for individual legislators from two political parties (Christian Democracy and the Italian Socialist Party) in Italy's lower house of representatives over 10 legislatures (1948–92) elected using open‐list proportional representation. Our analysis finds no reelection advantage for the average incumbent legislator. Only a tiny elite in each party successfully creates an incumbency advantage. We find incumbents advantaged for reselection by their political party. We interpret reselection advantage as a party loyalty premium. Our study depicts a political environment monopolized by party leaders who reward party loyalty but hamper legislators in appealing directly to voters.

Political Career Building and the Electoral Effect of Incumbency: Evidence from Brazil

In a political environment wherein the development of a political career might encompass frequent transitions between offices, it is usually unclear how winning a given position may ultimately affect subsequent electoral performances and career formation. We exploit regression discontinuity designs in Brazilian elections to estimate the electoral effect derived by incumbents of several positions both when running for reelection to the same held position, and in the event of attempting to attain another elective office. We document that the incumbency of legislative offices at the state and federal levels is associated with a strong positive effect on the probability of winning the same position in the following election, whereas officeholders in diverse branches of local governments do not appear to electorally benefit from their incumbency status and may even be harmed by it when displaying low political experience. Moreover, we find that state deputies also receive an incumbency advantage when running for the position of federal deputy, and that such a cross-office effect, along with all incumbency effects on winning the same position, is not due to selection into candidacy. Aside from the transition from state deputy to federal deputy, however, incumbents of any position tend to be less likely than their defeated counterparts to run for, and win, other positions.

The mayor's advantage: Causal evidence on incumbency effects in German mayoral elections

This paper provides empirical evidence on the party incumbency advantage in mayoral elections in Germany. Using a regression discontinuity design on a data set of about 25,000 elections, I estimate a causal incumbency effect of 38–40 percentage points in the probability of winning the next election. Studying the mechanisms behind this effect, I show that the electoral advantage is larger for full-time mayors, increasing in municipality size, independent of the specific partisanship of the mayor and constant between 1945 and 2010. Moreover, it increases with local spending hikes and it is independent of municipal debt.

Assessing the External Validity of Election RD Estimates: An Investigation of the Incumbency Advantage

The regression discontinuity (RD) design is popular because it provides a design-based estimate of the incumbency advantage. However, the RD estimate is “local”: it only identifies the effect in hypothetical elections with a 50-50 tie between the Democratic and Republican candidates. There is significant uncertainty and disagreement over the incumbency effect in safer districts away from this threshold. Indeed, mirroring the competing arguments in the theoretical literature, a survey of political scientists reveals that roughly equal numbers of respondents predict the effect to be either larger, smaller, or the same in less competitive districts. We employ a new method based on a validated conditional independence assumption that allows us to estimate the effect of incumbency in districts in a window around the threshold as large as 15 percentage points—that is, elections in which the winning candidate secured as much as 57.5% of the two-party vote. We find that the incumbency advantage is no larger or sm...

Politicisation of Conditional Cash Transfers: The Case of Guatemala

This article complements existing studies on the incumbency effects of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) by analysing the principal mechanisms by whichMi Familia Progresa(MIFAPRO) in Guatemala became increasingly politicised through clientelistic vote buying and threats of programme expulsion in case of non‐electoral support. It finds thatMIFAPROconstitutes an emblematic case with mixed effects that are particularly relevant in the diffusion ofCCTs to other developing countries.

Incumbency advantage in a proportional electoral system: A regression discontinuity analysis of Irish elections

The existence of a large incumbency advantage in the winner-takes-all plurality system of the United States is well documented. It is unclear whether incumbents in proportional systems should enjoy such a large advantage. Multi-seat constituencies make it difficult for individual incumbents to claim credit for the provision of local public goods and services. Moreover, multiple incumbents may dilute media attention thereby limiting name recognition advantage. We use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of incumbency using election data from Ireland’s system of proportional representation with a single transferable vote (PR-STV). Incumbency causes an eighteen percentage point increase in the probability that a candidate in Ireland’s lower house of parliament wins a seat in the next election. Our results indicate that the protection of vulnerable incumbents from intra-party competition may be a source of incumbency advantage in multi-member district elections.

Incumbency Effects in a Comparative Perspective: Evidence from Brazilian Mayoral Elections

High rerunning rates among incumbents and among the two major parties allow studies of U.S. incumbency advantage to bypass the selection problem of who chooses to rerun. In countries where rerunning is not widespread among individuals or parties, estimation using methods developed for the United States may result in a sample selection bias. In countries with party switching, there may be a disconnect between party and individual estimates. This article proposes a definition of incumbency advantage that is valid for countries that present any of these characteristics and that is valid for cross-country comparison: the effect of incumbency for anindividualpolitician on theunconditionalprobability of winning. I illustrate the issues raised in this article with evidence from Brazilian mayoral elections.

Women’s participation and the Incumbency Advantage in Slovak Cities: the Case Study of the Mayoral elections in Slovakia

The article focuses on the mayoral elections in all cities (138) in Slovakia. This analysis presents how the positions of mayors are distributed between men and women. Specific and detailed electoral data from the 2006 and 2010 mayoral elections allows for presuming whether the current distribution is caused by the electoral preferences of voters (demand) or by the supply of candidates. According to theoretical literature, mayors who are running for second term may have an advantage over their opponents. Data shows us how big this incumbency effect is in Slovak cities.

Electoral Imbalance and Democratic Responsiveness

It is widely believed that competitive elections are required for good democratic performance. Many races, however, see little electoral competition due to various electoral imbalances, especially reputational imbalance (asymmetries in voters' evaluation of candidates' quality, due for example to incumbency) and partisan imbalance (asymmetries in voters' evaluation of party label, due for example to ideology). We study the consequences of both types of imbalances in a unified theoretical framework building on the notion that voters are rationally ignorant. Our paper rationalizes key empirical regularities such as the existence of large incumbency spending and electoral advantages, as well as the moderate electoral impact of partisan redistricting. It generates novel empirical implications regarding the identification and interpretation of the effect of incumbency or campaign spending. We also highlight how moderate level of imbalance can improve the performance of the electoral process and discuss the consequences of our results for campaign regulation.

Does Regression Discontinuity Design Work? Evidence from Random Election Outcomes

We use data for 198121 candidates and 1351 random election outcomes to estimate the effect of incumbency status on future electoral success. We find no evidence of incumbency advantage using data on randomized elections. In contrast, regression discontinuity design, using optimal bandwidths, produces a positive and significant incumbency effect. Using even narrower bandwidths aligns the results with those obtained using the randomized elections. So does the bias-correction of Calonico et al. (forthcoming). Standard validity tests are not useful in detecting the problems with the optimal bandwidths. The appropriate bandwidth seems narrower in larger elections and is thus context specific.

Efecto Incumbente en Elecciones Municipales: Un Análisis de Regresión Discontinua para Guatemala

This thesis has two main objectives: (i) to analyze empirically, using data from municipal elections in Guatemala for the period 1999-2011, the effect of incumbency on the probability of being reelected and (ii) to explore the possible cause of the effects obtained from the estimations. To do this, a regression discontinuity estimation strategy is implemented exploiting the inherent discontinuity in the system of simple majority voting. Paradoxically, the findings show that far from being an advantage, incumbency seems to be an electoral disadvantage. The result extends to political parties. In the second part, the results are mixed, but suggest that elections seem to play an accountability role, but also are an important mechanism to discover the type (or quality) of politicians. This work is an important contribution to the limited literature on the dynamics of local elections in Guatemala and opens the door to future research issues.

Institutional Foundations of Incumbency Advantage: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Incumbency Effects in Africa

Why are legislative incumbents in most emerging democracies disadvantaged? Existing evidence shows that, unlike their counterparts in advanced democracies, incumbents in emerging democracies are disadvantaged. Current research attributes this to structural conditions that have led to endemic voter discontent. The argument is that the preponderance of venal and low quality incumbents incentivizes voter preference for high turnovers. This paper challenges this view on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Exploiting an exogenous shock and with original data comprising 13,932 candidate-level observations in legislative elections in Kenya and Zambia, a regression discontinuity analysis of the election results shows increases in incumbency advantage after transition from single party rule to multiparty politics. The explanation for this counter-intuitive finding is that institutions condition incumbents' ability to cultivate a personal vote, and as a result determine incumbency effects. These findings have important implications for our understanding of institutional change and horizontal accountability in emerging democracies.

Innovation and Diversity Redux: Analyzing Musical Form and Content in the American Recording Industry, 1990–2009

Using the American recording industry as a case study, this article analyzes innovation and diversity concurrently and outlines the analytical purchase gained from doing so; examines the effects of performer incumbency and combinatorial role patterns, thereby offering an empirical application of the “role as resource” perspective (Baker and Faulkner ); and provides data on an underexplored era in which the emergence of digital technology has had wide‐ranging repercussions. Regressing measures of innovation (form) and diversity (content) on incumbency status and combinatorial role patterns reveals that innovation and diversity operate through distinct collaborative patterns. New artists are found to be carriers of musical innovation, and while performing artists with autonomy over the roles of songwriter and producer are more likely to be progenitors of musical diversity, innovation emerges from role specialization. Artistic roles and performer attributes, moreover, come together in particular ways to influence diversity and innovation depending on the environmental context. Post compact disc (CD) format era, innovation wrought by producer specialization is predominant, but the music is devoid of diversity. I conclude by arguing that the manner in which configurations of diversity and innovation interact has implications both for cultural production and reception.

Incumbency effects in government and opposition: Evidence from Germany

Do district incumbents in an election have an advantage, and if so, do these advantages depend on which party is in government? We estimate the incumbency effect for the direct district candidates in German federal and state elections using a regression discontinuity design (RDD). When studying the heterogeneity in these effects, we find that incumbents from both large parties, the center-right CDU and the center-left SPD, have an advantage only if the SPD is in government. This effect is robust and shows even in state elections that are unrelated to federal elections.

Rebuilding biodiversity of Patagonian marine molluscs after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

We analysed field-collected quantitative data of benthic marine molluscs across the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary in Patagonia to identify patterns and processes of biodiversity reconstruction after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. We contrast diversity dynamics from nearshore environments with those from offshore environments. In both settings, Early Palaeogene (Danian) assemblages are strongly dominated by surviving lineages, many of which changed their relative abundance from being rare before the extinction event to becoming the new dominant forms. Only a few of the species in the Danian assemblages were newly evolved. In offshore environments, however, two newly evolved Danian bivalve species attained ecological dominance by replacing two ecologically equivalent species that disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous. In both settings, the total number of Danian genera at a locality remained below the total number of late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) genera at that locality. We suggest that biotic interactions, in particular incumbency effects, suppressed post-extinction diversity and prevented the compensation of diversity loss by originating and invading taxa. Contrary to the total number of genera at localities, diversity at the level of individual fossiliferous horizons before and after the boundary is indistinguishable in offshore environments. This indicates an evolutionary rapid rebound to pre-extinction values within less than ca 0.5 million years. In nearshore environments, by contrast, diversity of fossiliferous horizons was reduced in the Danian, and this lowered diversity lasted for the entire studied post-extinction interval. In this heterogeneous environment, low connectivity among populations may have retarded the recolonisation of nearshore habitats by survivors.

The Financial Incumbency Advantage: Causes and Consequences

In this article, we use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of incumbency on campaign contributions in the U.S. House and state legislatures. In both settings, incumbency causes approximately a 20–25 percentage-point increase in the share of donations flowing to the incumbent’s party. The effect size does not vary with legislator experience and does not appear to depend on incumbent office-holder benefits. Instead, as we show, the effect is primarily the result of donations from access-oriented interest groups, especially donors from industries under heavy regulation and those with less ideological ties. Given the role of money in elections, the findings suggest that access-oriented interest groups are an important driver of the electoral security of incumbents.