Chances Of Re-election Research Articles

Pandering and pork-barrel politics

We develop a model of pork-barrel politics in which a government official tries to improve her reelection chances by spending on targeted interest groups. The spending signals that she shares their concerns. We investigate the effect of such pandering on public spending. Pandering increases spending relative to a non-accountable official (one who does not have to run for reelection) if either the official's overall spending propensity is known, or if it is unknown but the effect of spending on the deficit is opaque to voters. By contrast, an unknown spending propensity may induce the elected official to exhibit fiscal discipline if spending is transparent.

POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM AND COUNTERCYCLICAL FISCAL POLICY IN ELECTION‐YEAR RECESSIONS

Political budget cycles (PBCs) have been well documented in the literature, albeit not for all circumstances. Similarly, there is clear evidence on the positive effect of economic growth on electoral success. However, no work has been done on the impact of economic growth on the magnitude of PBCs. The theoretical model argues that a government has an incentive to increase fiscal manipulations when a recession is expected to hit and curtail reelection chances; this amounts to countercyclical policy for opportunistic rather than Keynesian motives. Very robust evidence for this behavior is found in Portuguese municipalities; in election years, budget deficits go up even more and significantly so, when a recession is expected. (JEL D72, E62, H62)

Electoral Cycles of Tax Performance in Advanced Democracies

AbstractIt is widely accepted that incumbents in democratic societies may use various economic policies to increase their chances of re-election. But incumbents in the most advanced democracies may be restrained in overtly manipulating economic policy instruments before elections, because more experienced voters could penalize them for such opportunistic behavior. Incumbents may embrace indirect and more ‘camouflaged’ means such as opportunistically relaxing the stance of tax revenue performance before elections, either by laxer collection efforts, additional tax exemptions or preferential treatments, or a combination of these. In this article, we present evidence of election-related cycles in the tax revenue performance of 25 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development advanced democracies. We empirically analyze the collection effectiveness of Value Added Tax (VAT) around elections. The findings reveal significant deterioration of VAT revenue performance before elections.

The Effect of Electing Women on Future Female Candidate Selection Patterns: Findings from a Regression Discontinuity Design

AbstractIn this article, we address the question of how electing women to national or subnational parliaments affects future female candidate selection in an open-list proportional representation system, using the example of Poland. We consider three potential effects of electing a woman. First, based on existing theories of the incumbency advantage, elected women should have higher chances of reselection and reelection in future elections (incumbency effect). Second, as a result of becoming more powerful within their party, elected women might have a stronger influence on future list composition, and thus more women should run for office on these lists (empowerment effect). Finally, we argue that other parties might adjust their candidate selection patterns in response to the election of women on other party lists (contagion effect). We find strong evidence for the incumbency effect and some support for the contagion effect. The empowerment hypothesis, however, finds no empirical support.

For the Culture: Examining the Electoral Success of African American Incumbents in the U.S. Congress

In a country where African Americans were once slaves, denied citizenship, elective office, and relegated to second class status a central question that has sparked the interest of scholars examining African American politics has been the benefits of African American political representation. Political Scientists such as Hanes Walton Jr. argues that the rise of African American politicians should significantly improve the lives of African Americans because these politicians will utilize their elected office to provide political representation for African Americans and pursue policies that will dismantle the legacy of racism for African Americans. Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 African Americans politicians have won many seats to the United States Congress, yet few studies have explored the electoral success of these politicians. Studies that do examine the electoral success of African American Members of Congress all too often attribute their success to the creation of majority-minority congressional districts and provides very little attention to how they represent their constituencies. This chapter seeks to fill this void in the academic literature by examining the multiple contours that have attributed to the electoral success of African American congressional incumbents. Analyzing congressional elections from 1970-2012, this chapter demonstrates that while majority-minority congressional district is one the factors that provides African American House Members with an electoral advantage that their electoral success can also be attributed to the fact that they (1) benefit enormously from the incumbency factor, (2) they often face weak challengers in elections and (3) they engage in a number of different symbolic forms of representation that speaks to African American culture. The findings of this chapter suggest that like their white counterparts African American congressional incumbents are strategic actors and utilize many tactics that maximize their reelection chances. This chapter concludes with a set of recommendations for future research that will aid the scholarly community in better unpacking success of African American Members of Congress and African American descriptive representation.

Political Entrepreneurs and Pork-Barrel Spending

Pork-barrel spending is the use of federal money for localized projects that yield only a narrow geographic benefit. It is a commonly held belief that politicians use this spending to improve their chances of re-election. One way that an incumbent can increase their chances of re-election is through increased fundraising. Political entrepreneurs see this opportunity and attempt to benefit from these projects in exchange for campaign contributions. This paper investigates whether incumbents are able to use their position to bolster their campaign contributions. I find pork-barrel spending and political contributions to be positively related, but this effect is only present when the incumbent properly times the project. I also find that general federal appropriations do not have the same impact. This supports the claim that pork-barrel spending can be used as a currency in the marketplace for political capital.

Motivated Reasoning, Public Opinion, and Presidential Approval

Presidential approval is a desirable commodity for US presidents, one that bolsters re-election chances and the prospects of legislative success. An important question, then, is what shapes citizens’ approval of the executive. A large body of literature demonstrates that the president’s handling of issues, particularly the economy, is an important component. A similarly large literature confirms that evaluations of the president, like most political objects, are filtered through partisan lenses. Due to changes in the US political environment in the last few decades, we suspect that the relative importance of these components has changed over time. In particular, we argue that polarization has increased partisan motivated reasoning when it comes to evaluations of the president. We support this empirically by disaggregating approval ratings from Reagan to Obama into in- and out-partisans, finding that approval is increasingly detached from economic assessments. This is true for members opposite the president’s party earlier than it is for in-partisans. While the president has been over-attributed credit and blame for economic conditions, the increasing impact of partisanship on approval at the expense of economic sentiment has generally negative implications when it comes to electoral outcomes and democratic accountability.

The incumbent’s preference for imperfect commitment

Using a model with forward-looking voting strategies, we examine the tax policies of public officials who maximize the weighted average of rents and benefits to their specific electoral clienteles when commitment is possible. We assume that the degree of commitment to a tax policy can be varied through its design and institutional anchoring. At the center of the analysis lies the question of the extent to which public officials restrict the policy space of future governments. On the one hand, stronger restrictions make it more difficult for political opponents to enact unwanted policy changes, but, on the other hand, they also reduce the likelihood of reelection. We show that incumbents prefer perfect commitment to the absence of any commitment and that, from the point of view of an incumbent, imperfect commitment can be superior to perfect commitment. Imperfect commitment allows incumbents to raise their reelection chances either by binding themselves and causing the opponent to deviate or binding the opponent and deviating themselves.

Czy wpisy na wniosek do rejestru stałego wyborców w gminach wpływają na wyniki wyborów organu wykonawczego gmin?

Artykuł stanowi przykład analizy eksploracyjnej, której podjęcie uzasadniają wypowiedzi pozyskane od aktorów lokalnych w wybranych gminach na terenie kraju, sugerujące wykorzystywanie przez piastunów organów wykonawczych gmin wpisów na wniosek do rejestru wyborców w celu zwiększenia szans swojej reelekcji. W związku z tym sformułowano pytanie badawcze: czy wpisy na wniosek do rejestru wyborców w gminach wpływają na wyniki wyborów bezpośrednich organu wykonawczego gmin? Poszukując odpowiedzi na to pytanie, eksplorowano bazy danych ilościowych uwzględniające wielozakresowe cechy kandydatów i gmin. Weryfikacji dokonano, stosując: regresję liniową, logistyczną, przestrzenną oraz regresję nieciągłą (regression discontinuity design – RDD). Taka wielowątkowa analiza umożliwia udzielenie jednoznacznej odpowiedzi na postawione pytanie. Wpisy nie zwiększają szans ubiegających się o reelekcję na wygranie wyborów, nie zwiększają też ich poparcia wyborczego. Na wpisach zyskują nieznacznie pretendenci, ale zysk ten jest pochodną uwarunkowań strukturalnych, a nie intencjonalnych wpisów do rejestru w celu oddania głosu na określoną stronę rozgrywki. Nie można wykluczyć, że w niektórych gminach i wyborach wpisy mogły przechylić szalę rozgrywki wyborczej, ale są to przypadki na tyle skrajne i rzadkie, że niewykrywalne przez testy walidacyjne zmiennych w ramach schematu RDD. RDD wykazuje co prawda manipulacje wyników wyborczych, jednak ich źródłem nie są wpisy na wniosek do rejestru.

The US and NATO Expansion: Fulfilling a Domestic Political Agenda

The expansion of NATO has certainly been a very controversial issue that still sees the world divided into supporters and opponents. Various reasons have been brought forward to justify why the NATO enlargement decision was taken, inter alia the securitisation and stabilisation of Europe, the democratisation of the countries formerly under the Soviet yoke or the enhancement of the Alliance’s effectiveness and cohesion. Although all such propositions might be valid, this article wants to analyse if indeed, as often claimed, the US decision to enlarge NATO responded first and foremost to realpolitik considerations, and namely if it is true that enlargement addressed specific US’s domestic political concerns that had their expression also in foreign policy initiatives, and more specifically if President Clinton used NATO enlargement to enhance his chances of re-election. The study conducted demonstrates that it was indeed so and that President Clinton could have not possibly followed a different policy. Without the firm US commitment to expand NATO, the enlargement of the Alliance would have probably never taken place.

Determinants of party and mayor reelection in local governments: An empirical examination for Argentina during 1983-2011

This paper examines the determinants of reelection of parties and mayors in Argentine local elections during the 1983-2011 period. Using a unique and comprehensive database recording local elecion results for over 1200 local governments, we test three potential sources of variation: structural factors, polítical/institutional variables and economic variables. We find that incumbency advantage is strongly and significantly related with a higher probability of reelection. We also find some evidence supporting the economic voting hypothesis, that local economic conditions are relevant for explaining re-election of local governments. We also find that local governments where parties and mayors have been in office for a long time have greater re-election chances. Finally, we find that governments with municipal charters have lower probability of reelection. Summing up, there seems to be both economic and politico-institucional factors behind re-election rates of parties and mayors in Argentine local governments.

Voter Responses to Fiscal Austerity

Governments have great difficulties to design politically sustainable responses to rising public debt. These difficulties are grounded in a limited understanding of the popular constraints during times of fiscal pressure. For instance, an influential view claims that fiscal austerity does not entail significant political risk. But this research potentially underestimates the impact of austerity on voters because of strategic selection bias. To address this challenge, we conduct survey experiments in Spain, Portugal, Italy, the UK and Germany. Contrary to the previous literature, the results show that the reelection chances of governments decrease massively when they propose austerity measures. Voters object particularly strongly to spending cuts and, to a lesser extent, to tax increases. While voters also disapprove of fiscal deficits, they weight the costs of austerity policies more than their potential benefits for the fiscal balance. These findings are inconsistent with the policy recommendations of international financial institutions.

Political cycles: Beyond rational expectations.

Motivation and methodExisting rational expectations models cannot satisfactorily explain why political budget manipulations systematically raise re-election chances and only occur in “specific contexts”. This paper offers a theoretical explanation by including unsophisticated voters into an opportunistic political cycle model; unsophisticated voters are unable to take the optimal behaviour of other agents (fully) into account, but may, nonetheless, vaguely suspect government deception.ResultsFirst, rationally expected manipulations are, on average, fruitless in equilibrium. By including unsophisticated voters we can, however, corroborate empirically found electoral effects of political budget manipulations. Second, unsophisticated voters become anxious and suspicious in an intransparent or uncertain world, but the government tries to “outperform” their scepticism by increasing budget manipulations in order to appear more competent and, ultimately, increase re-election chances. It is, therefore, not surprising that political budget cycles are observed in countries suffering from intransparencies such as developing countries or new democracies. Third and in addition, the model presented here predicts that political opportunism produces, unintentionally, a countercyclical policy effect in election years, thereby, for instance, alleviating the typical problem of policy procyclicality in developing countries.Additional contributionThe paper also offers a theoretical explanation for political distortions found in forecasts by US states. Based on overly optimistic revenue forecasts the incumbent state government can conduct expansionary fiscal policies in order to appear more competent prior to an upcoming election. Since the resulting deficit can only be observed afterwards, the government can effectively circumvent a constitutional balanced budget constraint. As a result, there are political forecast and budget cycles in the state. More generally, however, these findings may also apply to European countries where balanced budget constraints are or will be in place (for instance the debt brakes in Switzerland and Germany); similarly, they apply to the supra-national European Fiscal Compact of the European Union.

An Exploration of the Use of Facebook by Legislators in Taiwan

Previous studies have found that how to win an election is always an important question for legislators. Their behavior in lawmaking and constituency service is also associated with their aspirations for re-election. In the era of booming social media, how legislators can use social media to increase their chances for election and re-election has become a compelling issue. This study argues that legislators do indeed maximize the benefits of social media to win elections. On this account, this study intends to explore two main questions: (1) What kind of messages legislators choose to convey to voters on their fan pages; and (2) Whether the political characteristics of legislators affect the types of the messages they convey there. In this study, posts were collected from the fan pages of 25 Taiwanese legislators. These text messages were then converted into numerical data that could be quantitatively analyzed with the content analysis method. It was found that legislators tend to start with soft messages in their communications with the public. They share some details of their daily schedules and everyday lives with their voters before they begin image building and posting political material. This study also found that the political characteristics of legislators, including their party membership, their status either as a district or proportional representation (PR) legislator, and their incumbency all affect the content of posts on their fan pages. For example, compared to Kuomintang (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators who share information from their daily lives, New Power Party (NPP) legislators prefer to share only political information. PR legislators devote more attention than district legislators to criticizing the government on their fan pages. Incumbents are significantly less likely than challengers to share daily information, but more likely to share political information. This study found that the aforementioned differences have resulted from the many ways that different types of legislators use to increase their chances of winning an election.

Uwarunkowania szans wyborczych ubiegających się o reelekcję wójtów i burmistrzów w wyborach w 2014 roku

<p>Celem analizy było określenie wpływu kwantyfikowalnych cech charakteryzujących kandydatów i gminy (zmienne niezależne) na szanse reelekcji wójtów i burmistrzów w wyborach konkurencyjnych rozgrywanych w regulaminowym terminie w 2014 roku (zmienna zależna). Przyjęto, że szanse reelekcji wójtów i burmistrzów w wyborach w 2014 roku warunkował zestaw wybranych 15 zmiennych objaśniających, takich jak m.in.: staż na stanowisku, posiadanie większości w radzie gminy z wyborów poprzednich, wydatki majątkowe inwestycyjne per capita w roku wyborczym. Zmienne niezależne pochodzą głównie ze źródeł statystyki publicznej (np.: GUS, PKW) i są dobierane na podstawie wskazań literatury przedmiotu i wniosków z badania terenowego. Do weryfikacji założeń wykorzystano regresję logistyczną zastosowaną na próbie dobieranej spośród wszystkich gmin poza miastami na prawach powiatu, równoważącej proporcję porażek i sukcesów wyborczych w 2014 roku. Wyniki analizy sugerują między innymi, że szanse ponownego wyboru w 2014 roku wzrastały w przypadku: rządzenia od 2010 roku, a nie dłużej, posiadania większości w radzie gminy według stanu formalnego z wyborów poprzednich czy wyższego wydatkowania inwestycyjnego w roku wyborczym. Szanse reelekcji zmniejszały się z kolei wraz ze wzrostem między innymi: konkurencji wyborczej czy udziału wydatków na pomoc społeczną w ogólnej puli wydatków gmin w roku wyborczym.</p>

Pension reserve fund, political budget cycles and fiscal illusion

We model political manipulations of pension reserve funds in a modified Shi and Svensson (2006) political budget cycle (PBC) model. Assuming that a share of voters suffers from fiscal illusion the incumbent can increase her re-election chances by prematurely spending parts of the reserve fund. We also obtain results that are counterintuitive, but only at first sight. First, it can be shown that the incumbent wants to reduce the manipulation when her ego rent increases. Second, the optimal magnitude of manipulation does not necessarily go up when the share of voters suffering from fiscal illusion rises.

Political pricing of electricity – Can it go with universal service provision?

Political parties in India are known to use electricity prices as a tool to secure a win in the democratic election process. This article examines the setting of electricity prices from a political economy perspective. Citizens differ in their willingness to pay for electricity, and the consumer surplus and electoral uncertainty seem to influence their choices while exercising their franchise. To win, political parties must receive a majority of votes, and a party in power may try to achieve this by choosing to ignore a consumer group, either by charging a price higher than their willingness to pay or by choosing to satisfy them by charging a lower price. Two theoretical models are proposed: the first model computes the possible prices when common (perfectly correlated) electoral shocks are anticipated, while the second model computes the possible prices for independent and identically distributed electoral shocks. We test these models with available data on willingness to pay and electricity price for Agricultural, Domestic, and Industrial consumers in an Indian State by generating prices that would be charged to each of these types of consumers to maximize the chances of re-election. Actual prices seem to confirm the second model more than the first.

Local elites, electoral reform and the distribution of central government funds: Evidence from Romania

How does the party affiliation of local elites influence the distribution of central government funds to territorial units? We revisit this question with the help of a new dataset on spending from Romania (2004–2011), a dataset that allows us to better understand the mechanisms linking local leaders to government spending, mechanisms that have not been systematically tested in the literature. Specifically we exploit the 2008 Romanian electoral reform in a research design that resembles a natural experiment. We identify two causal mechanisms that link the political affiliation of local elites to the receipt of government funds: (1) central leaders share the credit for the funds allocated with local leaders, and to get the most electoral benefits they are more likely to allocate funds to territories with leaders from the same party who act as vehicles for government credit claim; (2) central and local leaders engage in an exchange of perks game in which local leaders mobilize local resources in national electoral campaigns and receive in exchange funds from the government, which in turn help these local elites build a reputation and increase their re-election chances.

Electoral incumbency advantages and the introduction of fixed parliamentary terms in the United Kingdom

Can fixing the parliamentary term be expected to reduce electoral incumbency advantages? The United Kingdom’s 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act aims to prevent incumbents from scheduling early elections for political benefit. Yet, the view that flexible election timing gives incumbents an unfair advantage remains contested. The literature on opportunistic election calling—including the signalling effects of this strategy and the competence of governments that select it—lends support to both sides in the debate. This article examines how far the divergent arguments apply in the United Kingdom. Using observed outcomes and a potential outcomes approach, we investigate to what effect incumbents have used election timing. Our results suggest that governments can improve their re-election chances when they have discretion to time elections to favourable circumstances instead of facing voters at set intervals when conditions may not be advantageous. Fixed parliamentary terms are likely to reduce that incumbency advantage significantly.

Ideological alignment and the distribution of public expenditures

This article revisits the influential partisan alignment hypothesis, which posits that subnational governments aligned with central governments exhibit higher expenditures. To promote their own and their party’s re-election chances, central government politicians allocate more resources to ideologically aligned co-partisans at the subnational level. Consequently, aligned subnational governments exhibit higher expenditures than non-aligned ones. This article examines alignment effects in subnational education spending. Education is a crucial test case because, unlike other expenditures, the allocation of education spending is discretionary and often does not follow precise formulas. Using a novel dataset covering 266 subnational regions in 14 countries over 20 years, we offer the first cross-country analysis of alignment effects. Controlling for rival explanations, the findings reveal alignment effects on subnational education expenditures. Furthermore, political institutions matter, as alignment effects are stronger in countries where subnational governments have more discretion over education policy while lacking their own revenue sources (vertical fiscal imbalance). These findings imply that decentralisation might increase educational and socio-economic inequalities.