Incumbent Government Research Articles

Trust and accountability in times of crisis

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic took place against the backdrop of growing political polarization and distrust in institutions. Did deficiencies in government performance further erode trust? Did citizens' ideology interfere with how they processed information on government performance? To investigate, we conducted a pre‐registered online experiment in Spain in November 2020. The treatment group was provided with information on the number of contact tracers in their region, a policy under the control of regional governments. We find that individuals greatly overestimate the number of contact tracers. When we provide the actual number, we find declines in trust in governments, willingness to fund public institutions, and COVID‐19 vaccine acceptance. We also find that individuals endogenously change their attribution of responsibilities when receiving the treatment. In regions where the regional and central governments are ruled by different parties, sympathizers of the regional incumbent react to the negative news on performance by attributing greater responsibility to the central government. We call this the ‘blame‐shifting effect’. In these regions, the negative information does not reduce voting intention for the regional incumbent government. These results suggest that political accountability may be particularly difficult in settings with high polarization and where areas of responsibility are not clearly delineated.

Institutionally crafted Amhara-domination narrative: an existential threat to Amhara people

ABSTRACT Political narrative is an instrument for political actors to construct a shared meaning, and it can be harnessed to harm political opponents. The Italian invaders, the Ethiopian Student Movement, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the Oromo Liberation Front, and the incumbent regime contributed in varying degrees to the Amhara domination narrative. TPLF, in its political manifesto and later in the 1995 FDRE constitution, institutionally crafted an anti-Amhara narrative, reaching a crescendo after Abiy Ahmed assumed office in 2018. Thus, this research article tried to scrutinise and weigh the discourse of institutionally crafted Amhara existential threats. The study employed a qualitative research tradition and an exploratory research design approach that involved a political-economic analysis. The study finds that the century-old Amhara domination narrative, coupled with institutionally supported recurrent mass killings and expulsion, especially in Oromia, Benishangul-Gumuz, and Amhara regional states, posed a real and perceived existential threat that gave birth to the Amhara Fano armed struggle.

Hegemony in Political Communication: The Swing Voter Phenomenon in the 2020 Regional Election in Karangasem Regency, Bali

The 2020 Regional Election in Karangasem, Bali was marked by a significant swing voter phenomenon. The incumbent pair Mas Sumatri and Sukerana, predicted by surveys to win with 53.9% against Dana-Dipa with 37.2% during the campaign, actually suffered a crushing defeat with 43.4%, while Dana-Dipa won with 56.6% according to the official results from the Karangasem KPU. Additionally, there was a need to increase political participation, as the Karangasem KPU data showed that out of 377,873 registered voters, only 269,501 exercised their right to vote. This means there were 108,372 voters who did not vote. This research examines the swing voter phenomenon in the 2020 Regional Election in Karangasem by addressing hegemony factors as the cause of swing voters in the 2020 Regional Election in Karangasem, Bali, Indonesia. Data were analyzed using the concept of hegemony. The results of this research are: first, the hegemonic factors of the incumbent's policies causing swing voters and the counter-hegemony by the community against the incumbent government's policies. Second, the political communication strategies of the candidates to minimize swing voters in the 2020 Regional Election in Karangasem.

Public (In)Tolerance of Government Non‐Compliance with High Court Decisions

Governments‐ compliance with high court decisions is a critical factor affecting judicial independence, power, and legitimacy. Under what conditions do citizens tolerate incumbent non‐compliance with apex court decisions? Some theories yield predictions that government supporters will be more tolerant towards non‐compliance, while others assert that citizens may value judicial review irrespective of their political preferences. Although the underlying logic of both arguments is plausible, the contexts that shape citizens‐ non‐compliance preferences are not well identified. Focusing on the moderating effect of elite behavior and contextual factors, we demonstrate that supporters of incumbent governments are more tolerant of government non‐compliance in the years following high-profile shows of interbranch attacks or government disregard of high court decisions, and in environments where the media is lacking independence.

The Government Financial Advantage of Early Elections: Evidence from UK MP Candidate Spending

In many parliamentary democracies, incumbents retain the right to call early elections. This is thought to provide incumbent governments with an advantage due to the ability to time elections to favorable economic conditions. This article explores an additional incumbency advantage of early elections. Due to information asymmetry about election timing, government parties can better plan fundraising in early elections years compared to non-government parties, which gives government parties a relative financial advantage. This proposition is tested on campaign spending data from over 50,000 British parliamentary candidates 1945–2019. The results support the argument. Government party candidates gain a relative financial advantage in early elections years compared to scheduled election years. The effect is found only for non-incumbent candidates and was eliminated by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011, which removed government early election calling. The results suggest that government election calling power provides incumbent government parties with a relative financial advantage.

Challenging and Enhancing Legitimacy Through Humor: A Comparative Study of Candidates’ Use of Humor on Facebook before the 2019 and 2023 Finnish Parliamentary Elections

A prevalent aspect of contemporary digital campaigning is the use of humor to attract attention, elicit amusement, and mark group boundaries. This study investigates the humor in digital campaigns during two recent Finnish parliamentary elections, focusing on how different styles of humor are used to (de)legitimize political ideas and actors. Our original dataset consists of 125,604 posts by 1262 candidates on Facebook six months before the 2019 and 2023 election days. Using Facebook’s haha reactions and manual coding to annotate humor style, we focused on 729 posts with seemingly intentional humor by candidates. We show how different parties and individual candidates used humor to varying degrees and in different styles. Overall, the proportion of humorous posts was not high, but the populist radical right Finns Party candidates used humor by far the most, and their style was primarily aggressive, aimed at delegitimizing the incumbent government, political opponents, and their reference groups. Candidates from other major parties also used some humor, but overall the tone was more positive. Some of these candidates were profiled as “humor specialists” who produced similar combinations of ridicule and anti-elitism as the Finns Party candidates or, alternatively, focused on disseminating self-deprecating and affiliative humor. Affiliative and self-deprecating humor was used to foster closeness, ordinariness, and spontaneity, thus legitimizing oneself as a relatable candidate. The paper discusses how candidates use humor strategically to stand out in a competition for attention between candidates, and elaborates on the implications of using different humor styles in strategic political communication.

Why nanny statism matters: evidence from the first wave of COVID-19

BackgroundA nanny state imposes restrictions on people’s liberty and freedom of action in order to advance their interest and welfare. The extent to which this is desirable, or even ethically acceptable, is debated in the literature. This paper formulates and tests the following hypothesis: the more of a nanny a state has been in the past, the more likely it is that the incumbent government will respond to a new, unknown threat with interventions of a paternalist nature, irrespective of other factors that might contribute to shaping government’s response. This hypothesis is then taken to the data using the first wave of COVID-19 as an empirical test.MethodsData are collected from secondary sources for a sample of 99 countries. Nanny statism is measured by the number of paternalist laws and regulations adopted by a country in the past. The response to COVID is proxied by the time of adoption of control and containment measures and their stringency. The public health outcome is measured by the COVID-19 death toll at the end of June 2020. These variables, plus several controls, are then used to estimate a set of linear and probit regressions and a proportional hazard model of the timing of adoption of control and containment measures.ResultsAn increase in nanny statism by 0.1 (on a scale from 0 to 10) on average increases the probability of adoption of control and containment measures by 0.077 (i.e. 7.7 percentage points). The central tenement of the hypothesis is therefore consistent with the empirical evidence. The linear and probit regressions also show that there is no evidence of a significant effect of nanny statism on the stringency of the measures adopted. Irrespective of stringency, however, early adoption of control and containment measures is found to reduce the death toll of COVID-19 in the first half of 2020: an increase in nanny statism by 0.1 reduces the COVID death toll by approximately 7%.ConclusionsA tradition of nanny statism potentially leads to a more timely and effective public policy response to a new, unknown crisis. Further tests of the hypothesis should look at the relationship between nanny statism and public health outcomes from natural disasters.

Partisan Politics in Portugal

Abstract This paper reviews the literature on partisan politics in Portugal at the national and sub-national levels. Starting with a description of the institutional setting, main parties and electoral results, the paper then delves into how partisanship matters for the policies implemented by incumbent governments. The available evidence indicates clear differences in several policy areas, such as the labour market, welfare, health, education, and gender issues, with Portuguese left- and right-wing governments acting in line with their ideological agendas. Voter behaviour and the emergence of the populist far-right in the Portuguese parliament are also analysed. (JEL codes: D04, D7, H4, and H7)

The politics of policing in Pakistan: decentralisation of power in a federalised political landscape

ABSTRACT How do political parties establish partisan control over police forces in federalised hybrid regimes with powerful militaries? Focusing on Pakistan, this paper examines how, in the context of limited and ambiguous administrative decentralisation after the 18th Amendment to the constitution, and continued military embeddedness in state bureaucracies, parties have sought to control provincial police forces. Focusing on clashes over appointments in the leadership of provincial police forces, we argue that: firstly, turnover in the leadership of provincial police forces is more likely under new governments than under incumbent governments; and, secondly, provincial police leadership is more likely to pushback against partisan control when the hybrid political system is vertically fragmented, i.e, when the provincial political leadership and the federal military leadership are not aligned. We analyse the politics of policing in two provinces, Sindh and Punjab, since 2017. This comparative analysis contributes to debates on the politics of policing in hybrid federations.

European Elections and Financial Markets: Navigating Political Winds and Market Reactions

Abstract A new wave of extreme right-wing political parties entered the European political scene both on the national levels and the European supra-governmental level sparking fears about the rule of law among investors and policymakers. The European Parliament’s elections scheduled for June 2024 are seen as a crucial turning point in the continent's political landscape. Using a mix of OLS regressions and event study, this paper analyzed how stock markets and bond markets reacted to European elections. The results show that the incumbent government's fiscal record appears to influence its re-election chances in developing countries and markets price weak fiscal balances around elections. The paper assessed how government bond markets reacted to the EP’s elections rounds of 2014 and 2019. These rounds of elections have been dominated by the political parties with cantered-orientated ideologies which may not be the case for the next round of elections in 2024. The results show how EP’s elections stabilized bond markets, especially in countries with weak macroeconomic fundamentals. The results emphasize the intricate relationship between fiscal policies, political events, and financial market behaviour. Investors, policymakers, and governments should consider these findings when assessing electoral and market dynamics, particularly in the context of the upcoming 2024 European Parliament elections.

The Political Budget Cycle: Evidence from Indian Municipal Corporation Elections

The political budget cycle (PBC) theory deals with increased spending or decreased revenue collection, or a combination of both, on the verge of an election by the incumbent government to retain office. Empirical verification of the PBC theory at the subnational local government level is scarce in the literature. Subnational local governments are more prominent in population and budget for a country like India. This study takes into account 34 municipal corporations in India to examine the PBC theory and find strong evidence of politically motivated cycles on the budget expenditure and revenue front. Notably, the more visible expenditure on welfare schemes shows increased spending during an election period. On the revenue side, this study also finds evidence in support of the PBC theory. Indian municipal corporations are creating ‘welfare’ and ‘infrastructure’ cycles during the election period to gain political profit and are validating the ‘visibility’ and ‘targetability’ hypotheses described in the literature. This study is the first attempt to trace the presence of the PBC at the subnational local government level in India.

Loyalties and interests: How political motivations influence voters’ responses to scandals

Scandals have always been a highly salient problem in politics. In judging politicians for their misconduct, voters may arguably be biased – they may evaluate scandals based on individual motivations, such as partisanship and self-interested concerns. In this paper, we examine these two considerations in the case of two real-world corruption scandals involving a single incumbent government. In addition to testing for the effects of partisan motivations in authentic situations, we consider how scandals associated with policy goals interact with personal motivations, shaping the degree to which people penalize a scandalous government. Across two survey experiments that prime respondents about real-world corruption scandals, we manipulate question wording for some participants and measure their evaluations of a scandalous leader's performance. We find an effect for self-interested concerns when the benefits associated with the scandal are concentrated and tangible. Our findings suggest that voters hold public figures accountable for misbehaviour and that there are limits to partisan loyalties in political scandals.

USAID Democracy Promotion as a Possible Predictor of Revolutionary Destabilization

Abstract USAID democracy promotion programs might not only influence the democracy levels, but also increase the likelihood of revolutionary uprisings in the recipient states. Democracy promotion can strengthen political opponents of the incumbent regime via support for alternative media, civil society groups and political parties, on one hand, and, on the other, support democratic institutions that in contrast to autocracies are more tolerable towards political opponents and thus allow more room for expressing political will on the streets. Since democracy aid targets “democrats” who are less prone to exert armed violence, the authors expect it to be associated with unarmed uprisings. Using logit regression models, they find that the volume of the USAID financial democracy assistance appears to be a significant predictor of unarmed revolutionary destabilization, but its effect is relatively weak. Some particular sub-sectors of democracy assistance have an impact on revolutionary destabilization, namely: civil society, elections, human rights and media assistance. These correlations might be partly explained by the fact that USAID assistance goes disproportionately to anocracies. This aid tends to increase the probability of revolutionary destabilization in two ways – directly (through strengthening political opponents of the regime) and indirectly (through increasing the number of anocracies in the world).

EFFECTIVENESS OF AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION SERVICES IN REDUCING POVERTY AMONG FISH FARMERS IN THE COASTAL REGION OF ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

Agricultural development is the foundation for economic growth and provides a primary means of food security, employment generation, and poverty reduction for Nigerians. These are also the very reasons motivating successive incumbent governments of Nigeria to initiate one type of agricultural intervention program or another to generate employment, attain food security, and aid in poverty reduction. The study assesses the effectiveness of agricultural extension services in reducing poverty among fish farmers in the coastal region of Ondo State, Nigeria. A well-structured interview schedule was used to collect data from the respondents and simple random sampling technique was used in selecting 80 respondents. Data collected was analyzed using frequency counts and percentage while Chi-square and Pearson product moment correlation was used for testing the hypotheses. Results of the socioeconomic characteristics show that more than half (58.7%) of the respondents were adults, male (68.7%), married (78.8%), literate (92.5%), having household size of <7 members (92.5%), earned an annual income of <#1,000,000 (73.7%), and having fish farming experience of <5 years (41.2%). Further analysis shows that catfish is mostly farmed by the respondents in the study area (72.5%), belong to one social group or the other (52.5%), and have access to agricultural extension agents (100%). Similarly, the study findings shows that all the respondents (100%) have access to all the different types of services rendered and the different types of agricultural extension services were rendered to the fish farmers which include technology transfer (93%), information and support services (90%), food safety and quality (89%), marketing and distribution (75%), sustainable fisheries (88%), credit and finance (96%), safety measures (100%), training to fish farmers (97%), input supply (88%), and technical expertise (92%). Furthermore, the types of agricultural extension services utilized by the fish farmers include information and support services (100%), food safety and quality (100%), credit and finance (100%), safety measures (100%), input supply (85%), and technical expertise (100%). Types of constraints militating effective utilization of agricultural extension service rendered identified by the fish farmers include weak linkages of research and training centers with extension workers and users (82%), lack of properly qualified/trained extension personal (100%), inadequate number of grass root workers (98%), lack of clear extension strategies (85%), emphasis on welfare than development (88%), much emphasis on technology than its transfer to end users (75%), inadequate infrastructure facilities (80%), and of the respondents and lack of incentives for field staff (100%). There was positive and significant relationships between respondents’ age (r=0.532; p≤0.05), number of years spent schooling (r=0.589; p≤0.05), household size (r=0.117; p≤0.05), annual income (r=0.515; p≤0.05), fish farming experience, (r=0.146; p≤0.05), and effectiveness of agricultural extension services in reducing poverty. The study recommended that more qualified/trained extension personnel should be employed and adequate incentives should be made available to the field staff.

Can corruption connect you to politics? Nepotism, anxiety, and government blame

AbstractCan corruption scandals trigger citizens to punish a poor‐performing government? Citizens often fail to punish governments with subpar policy outcomes because they tend to isolate politics from their personal life and avoid blaming one's own party. Challenging these popular beliefs, our findings from a survey experiment in South Korea indicate that corruption scandals accusing elected officials of nepotism trigger people to blame the government as the cause of their personal grievances. This effect is prominent among individuals who are highly worried about their own education, employment, and retirement, highlighting anxiety as a driving factor. Surprisingly, the effect of nepotism spills across domains; for example, college admission nepotism increases government blame for concerns on not only education but also employment and retirement. Moreover, nepotism may prompt partisans whose party is in power, who are otherwise less likely to blame the incumbent government, to attribute greater blame to the government. These findings imply that corruption scandals can alter perceptions of how government performance affects personal lives. Overall, the study suggests that nepotism in areas critical to personal well‐being may generate an effective opposition against poor‐performing government, as seen in the 2016–17 South Korean presidential corruption scandal.

Politics of household indebtedness in Turkey

ABSTRACT This paper deals with how Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments navigated the politics of household indebtedness in Turkey and utilized it towards the 2023 elections. It argues that household debt is a political tool with positive and negative consequences for incumbent governments. Households have been able to access debt instruments such as credit cards, consumer credit, car loans, and mortgages in Turkey since the onset of financialisation in the 2000s. AKP governments have benefited from the micro-level household wealth/debt accumulation as well as its macro-level economic implications for the construction-led, credit-dependent economic growth model. On the other hand, household debt has had destructive societal consequences such as bankruptcies, divorces, and suicides that became commonplace in the opposition narratives. Pinpointing the responsibility for indebtedness among households, financial system, regulatory agencies, and government, as well as devising policy solutions, has become a political struggle in the months leading up to the 2023 elections.

India in 2023

In 2023, India experienced another year of strong economic growth; it was the fastest- growing economy in the world. However, as before, this growth was accompanied by growing unemployment and inequality between urban and rural regions. Furthermore, the year was marked yet again by significant declines in the quality of democracy as the parliament was increasingly marginalized, a new law effectively handed control of the Election Commission of India to the incumbent government, and laws and government actions curbed civil liberties and human rights. One major positive development was the passage of a law reserving seats for women in the directly elected national and state assemblies. India successfully hosted its first G20 summit but also dealt with major foreign policy issues, including increasing rivalry with China for regional influence, accusations of assassination attempts by its intelligence agencies in friendly countries, and the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict. Finally, 2023 saw the BJP claim dominant electoral victories in four out of nine states, putting it in government in 16 of the 28 Indian states.

Why aren’t more women on the gubernatorial ballot?

ABSTRACT Although women now occupy a record number of governorships and the number of women running for governor has increased significantly in the last four years, women still run for governor at lower rates than men. This study examines why there have been so few women gubernatorial candidates in primary elections using a dataset that includes every primary election or convention used to select major party gubernatorial nominees from 1978 through 2022. We examine four distinct areas to learn why so few women run: the potential candidate pool; candidates, parties, and voters as strategic actors; gubernatorial office structure; and major political, social, and cultural events and their impact on candidate pools. With some important differences between the Democratic and Republican parties, we find that each of these areas has a significant impact on whether women run for governor. Notably, we find that the pipeline is significant for Republican women during the period of study but not for Democratic women. Office structure, incumbent governors, and events such as those surrounding the 2016 election, also impact whether women run for governor. The results indicate that states can adopt changes to the structure of the governor’s office, and parties can adopt rules and facilitate norms that are favorable to women.

Closer during crises? European identity during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT Do crises bring us closer together? Many have observed how, during the Covid-19 pandemic, several European societies experienced a ‘rally around the flag’ effect. While this certainly took the form of support for incumbent governments, anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals’ European identification may have been affected as well. In this paper, we exploit the unique timing and panel nature of a survey, whose respondents were interviewed in March/beginning of April 2020, again in July 2020, and finally in November 2022 to analyze whether a change in attachment to Europe occurred between the first and the second wave of the pandemic and with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our results show that the emotive dimension of EU attachment changed over the course of these crises, increasing both during the Covid pandemic and after the invasion of Ukraine. Our results support the view that symmetric crises tend to bring people closer together, suggesting that far-reaching EU-level actions in case of crises create, rather than require, a perception of belonging to an EU-level community.

Revolutionary leaders and the punishment of critics

I explore a previously neglected mechanism of mass mobilization in autocracies. Revolutionary leaders may deliberately provoke punishment from the incumbent regime to signal their political conviction and thus encourage citizens to identify with and support the revolutionary movement. I model the interplay of repression, criticism, and revolutionary actions as a dynamic game with incomplete information about the leader’s type. The role of the revolutionary leader is to enable people to identify with the movement by credibly embodying political change. From the incumbent’s perspective, repression turns out to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a severe punishment of critics increases citizens’ cost of participating in revolutionary actions. On the other hand, harsh repressions may simultaneously establish a trustworthy leader whom people want to follow in order to replace the current political regime. My results thus help explain a stylized fact, namely that revolutionary leaders sometimes need to fail before they can succeed.