Incumbent Support Research Articles

Crime, remittances, and presidential approval in Mexico

ABSTRACT Previous work on remittances and incumbency support has focused on recipients’ (pocketbook and sociotropic) economic assessments. In Mexico, however, crime has become the second (if not the first) concern of voters and security evaluations have become closely linked to the national executive’s performance. In this paper we posit that in Mexico remittances can also increase incumbent support through their effect on recipients’ security assessments. We attribute this finding to remittances allowing recipients to take crime-preventive measures and alleviate some of the pressure associated with crime and violence, which in turn improves recipients’ assessments of the security situation of the country and evaluations of the incumbent. Using individual data from Mexico for the period 2006–2017, we find that remittance recipients have higher levels of perceived personal safety and better national security evaluations than non-recipients, and that security assessments are a significant predictor of presidential approval rates. The evidence thus suggests that in Mexico, where crime is rising, and presidents are increasingly rewarded or blamed for containing violence, the effect of remittances on presidential approval also operates through improved personal safety perceptions and public security assessments.

Transparency, Policy Outcomes, and Incumbent Support

SummaryGovernment transparency has been discussed both as a way to decrease informational asymmetries between officeholders and citizens and as part of what makes for procedurally fair governance. These two different lines of argument generate predictions about how transparency should change voters’ reactions to economic and policy outcomes. First, under high transparency, voters should respond less positively to fiscal expansions. Second, they should become more sensitive to incumbents’ ability to deliver outcomes that generate benefits in the long‐run than to current tangible benefits. We test these arguments using municipality level data in Portugal. Controlling for variables that previous research has shown to drive electoral support for incumbents in local elections, only in the least transparent municipalities is support positively related with increases in local current expenditures, budget deficits, and municipal wages. Instead, where transparency is higher, voters are more likely to reward improvements in the quality of education.

When Do Citizens Respond Politically to the Local Economy? Evidence from Registry Data on Local Housing Markets

Recent studies of economic voting have focused on the role of the local economy, but with inconclusive results. We argue that while local economic conditions affect incumbent support on average, the importance of the local economy varies by citizens’ interactions with it. More recent and frequent encounters with aspects of the local economy make those aspects more salient and, in turn, feature more prominently in evaluations of the incumbent government. We label this process “context priming.” We provide evidence for these propositions by studying local housing markets. Linking granularly detailed data on housing prices from Danish public registries to both precinct-level election returns and an individual-level panel survey, we find that when individuals interact with the housing market, their support for the incumbent government is more responsive to changes in local housing prices. The study thus provides a framework for understanding when citizens respond politically to the local economy.

The Political Consequences of Self-Insurance: Evidence from Central-Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia

Does self-insurance, such as access to savings or assets, affect support for government? While existing research recognizes that households’ ability to privately manage income risk and economic uncertainty influences voter redistributive preferences, we know relatively little about how self-insurance affects evaluations of government in the first place. To gain traction on this question, we combine cross-sectional and panel public opinion surveys from 28 countries in Central Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia with macro-data on economic performance. Exploiting variation in citizen responses to the Great Recession, we show that by enabling citizens to smooth consumption, self-insurance affects how they form economic perceptions. Moreover, we find that self-insurance bolsters support for incumbents. Results allow us to better understand why economic downturns may not dampen support for government, even when economic hardship is rife and access to public safety nets is limited.

Party support in multi-level elections: the influence of economic perceptions and vertical congruence

How does the economy influence party support in multi-level states? Using regional-level survey data from Canada, Germany and Spain, we show that there is a ‘cross-level’ effect of economic evaluations. Citizens thus take into consideration both the regional and the national economy when determining their support for incumbents at either level. However, the way in which they do so depends on whether the same party is in office at the two levels or not. If so, standard reward-punishment patterns apply. If different parties are in office at the two levels, incumbents at one level are rewarded for bad and punished for good economic outcomes at the other level. Overall, the influence of cross-level economic perceptions is about half as large as that of same-level economic perceptions. Our findings have important normative implications for the signalling function of elections.

The three stages of the anti‐incumbency vote: Retrospective economic voting in young and established democracies

AbstractEconomic prosperity is the best recipe for an incumbent government to be re‐elected. However, the financial crisis was significantly more consequential for governing parties in young rather than in established democracies. This article introduces the age of democracy as a contextual explanation which moderates the degree to which citizens vote retrospectively. It shows a curvilinear effect of the age of democracy on retrospective economic voting. In a first stage after the transition to democracy, reform governments suffer from a general anti‐incumbency effect, unrelated to economic performance. In a second step, citizens in young democracies relate the legitimacy of democratic actors to their economic performance rather than to procedural rules, and connect economic outcomes closely to incumbent support. As democracies mature, actors profit from a reservoir of legitimacy, and retrospective voting declines. Empirically, these hypotheses are corroborated by data on vote change and economic performance in 59 democracies worldwide, over 25 years.

Local Economic Shocks and National Election Outcomes: Evidence from Hungarian Administrative Data

What are the consequences of unequal economic conditions on national election results? In this study, we use extraordinarily granular economic data measured without sampling error to assess how variation in local economic conditions across 3152 settlements affects incumbent support across the two most recent Hungarian elections. In addition, we use 95 monthly surveys capturing vote intention for nearly 100,000 respondents to assess possible individual level mechanisms. We find that the local economic milieu has a substantial effect on incumbent support, and that this effect was especially pronounced in the 2010 election that coincided with the peak of the Great Recession. Our micro-level analyses support these findings and suggest that the effect of local unemployment is unlikely to be explained by an aggregation of dissatisfaction among the unemployed.

Abandon Ship? Party Brands and Politicianss Responses to a Political Scandal

How do politicians react to a political earthquake? In this article, we study politicians’ – rather than voters’ – responses to the main political scandal in Italian recent history (Tangentopoli), and overcome endogeneity concerns by analysing the local implications of this national corruption scandal. We find that local politicians withdraw support for incumbents in parties hit by Tangentopoli – inducing early government terminations in such municipalities. Moreover, politicians in parties hit by the scandal exhibit higher rates of party switching and lower re-running rates. By decreasing the value of the party “brand”, scandals thus become transmitted across politicians and levels of government via partisan cues.

Nuanced Accountability: Voter Responses to Service Delivery in Southern Africa

Various theories of democratic governance posit that citizens should vote for incumbent politicians when they provide good service, and vote for the opposition when service delivery is poor. But does electoral accountability work as theorized, especially in developing country contexts? Studying Southern African democracies, where infrastructural investment in basic services has expanded widely but not universally, we contribute a new empirical answer to this question. Analyzing the relationship between service provision and voting, we find a surprising negative relationship: improvements in service provision predict decreases in support for dominant party incumbents. Though stronger in areas where opposition parties control local government, the negative relationship persists even in those areas where local government is run by the nationally dominant party. Survey data provide suggestive evidence that citizen concerns about corruption and ratcheting preferences for service delivery may be driving citizen attitudes and behaviors. Voters may thus be responsive to service delivery, but perhaps in ways that are more nuanced than extant theories previously recognized.

A Tale of Three Cities: Electoral Accountability in Indonesian Local Politics

ABSTRACTIn Indonesia, local government is endowed with important policy prerogatives and local politics is key to advance social welfare. The literature on Indonesian local politics has convincingly exposed serious limitations in local democratic practices, and it has questioned the ability of local democracy to promote genuine political change. This work, however, predominantly focuses on elite politics and specific forms of accountability based on patronage and clientelism. In this paper, we study democratic accountability in Indonesia from a different perspective. Drawing from the comparative literature on voting behavior, we hypothesize that Indonesian voters evaluate local politicians for their performance, and that they vote to reward or punish them for what they do in office. The analysis of three original surveys conducted in the cities of Medan, Samarinda and Surabaya offers partial support for this argument. While there is a positive relationship between evaluations of local government performance and support for incumbents, the strength of this link varies substantially across individuals and cities. The results shed new light on voter-politician linkages in Indonesia, suggesting that forms of accountability different from clientelism may emerge in this large and diverse country.

Elections in Democracies: Balancing Support and Opposition

The electoral competition that characterizes democracies imposes severe limits on the support that governing parties obtain in national elections. On average, win or lose incumbents take 41% of the vote. When they win, their support averages 46%, and their mean maximum vote is 52%. Only rarely do incumbents manage to do better than this, and quite often they do worse. The few outliers on the plus side are found in a small number of countries (the British Caribbean and the United States). This level of support yields, on average, two consecutive terms in office lasting about eight years. It is as if an equilibrium-seeking natural balance between support and opposition to the in-party operates in democracies, forcing a change of government on average once per decade. As well as delineating other limits to electoral support for incumbents, differences in outcomes by democracy type (parliamentary vs. presidential) as well as persistent disparities among geo-cultural regions are examined and puzzled over.

Retrospective Voting in Big-City US Mayoral Elections

Retrospective voting is a central explanation for voters’ support of incumbents. Yet, despite the variety of conditions facing American cities, past research has devoted little attention to retrospective voting for mayors. This paper first develops hypotheses about how local retrospective voting might differ from its national analog, due to both differing information sources and the presence of national benchmarks. It then analyzes retrospective voting using the largest data set on big-city mayoral elections between 1990 and 2011 to date. Neither crime rates nor property values consistently influence incumbent mayors’ vote shares, nor do changes in local conditions. However, low city-level unemployment relative to national unemployment correlates with higher incumbent support. The urban voter is a particular type of retrospective voter, one who compares local economic performance to conditions elsewhere. Moreover, these effects appear to be present only in cities that dominate their media markets, suggesting media outlets’ role in facilitating retrospective voting.

The electoral consequences of austerity: economic policy voting in Europe in times of crisis

Voters typically observe macroeconomic outcomes in order to evaluate government performance. However, during crises, when the clarity of economic responsibility is poor and the economy is in recession, citizens need additional sources of information in order to form a reasoned opinion. Government policy response is one such source. This study shows on a sample of 24 European nations from 2004, 2009 and 2014 that in the post-crisis period, economic policies have emerged as one of the key predictors of vote choice, with government decisions to pursue fiscal austerity leading to significantly lower levels of incumbent support. Furthermore, the paper tests the possibility that the effect of austerity is conditioned by the clarity of responsibility. In multilevel systems, where policies are externally imposed, voters could be expected to hold incumbents less accountable for unpopular measures. The analysis, however, provides no evidence that policy effects depend on the extent to which national governments share policy responsibilities with supranational and intergovernmental institutions. Accountability for policy actions is primarily attributed at the domestic level as voters are able to identify the decisional role of national governments.

Economic voting in Europe: Did the crisis matter?

Recent voting behavior literature is concerned with the consequences of the global financial and economic crisis. During 2008–2009, most European countries faced a considerable slowdown in economic growth and an increase in unemployment levels. Theoretically, this would lead us to expect strong economic effects on incumbent support. However, recent academic work suggests that diminishing clarity of responsibility makes it increasingly difficult for voters to attribute blame for economic outcomes, consequently making punitive voting less likely. Has the sanctioning-rewarding mechanism then changed over time? Was economic voting more or less pronounced during the crisis than it was prior to the economic downturn? Analyzing the European Election Studies (EES) data for 12 Western European countries in 1989, 1994, 2004, 2009 and 2014, this paper finds support for neither proposition: there is very little abrupt change in economic effects over time. The statistical relationship between the economy and voting remained remarkably constant and was not subject to short-term fluctuations, even after the most dramatic economic recession in our lifetime. The stability of economic voting is particularly noteworthy considering that levels of voter dissatisfaction with national economic performance skyrocketed in 2009.

Has economic voting changed? A comparative analysis of Italy and other Southern European countries

ABSTRACTThe financial and debt crisis caused severe economic and political instability in Italy. Economic hardship led to an array of unpopular policy measures, giving rise to public dissatisfaction and civil unrest. These dramatic developments call for a re-assessment of the basic link between the economy and political support. This article uses the European Election Studies (EES) Voter study data from 2004, 2009 and 2014 to investigate patterns of economic voting. We assess the magnitude of economic effects in Italy in comparison with other Southern European countries that in recent years have witnessed similar economic and political turmoil. The results point to a strong impact of economic conditions on incumbent support in Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain. However, retrospective voting weakened amid the crisis, with Italian voters in particular placing less blame for economic conditions on the national government than before. Importantly, we also find a considerable increase in prospective voting in Italy. Despite the nation’s past economic experience, voters were willing to reward Renzi’s government when they believed that its policies would bring economic improvement.

The Politics of Potholes: Service Quality and Retrospective Voting in Local Elections

By conditioning their support for political incumbents on observed performance outcomes, voters can motivate elected officials to represent their interests faithfully while in office. Whether elections serve this function in subnational US government remains unclear, however, because much of the existing research on retrospective voting in these contexts focuses on outcomes that are not obviously salient to voters or over which the relevant government officials have limited influence. In this study, we examine one outcome—the quality of local roads—that is both salient and unquestionably under the control of city government. Our analysis leverages within-city variation in the number of pothole complaints in one of America’s largest cities and shows that such variation can explain neighborhood-level differences in support for incumbents in two political offices—mayor and city council—across several electoral cycles.

Winners and Losers in International Trade: The Effects on US Presidential Voting

AbstractInternational trade directly influences US presidential elections. We explore the electoral implications of the increasing tradability of services and the large US surplus in services trade. Our paper builds on prior work showing that job insecurity from import competition in manufacturing diminishes political support for incumbents. We construct novel measures of the tradability of an industry using establishment-level data covering nearly all US economic activity. We find increases in incumbent party vote shares in counties with large numbers of workers in high-skilled tradable services as well as goods, and decreases in counties with high employment in low-skilled manufacturing. Incumbent parties are particularly vulnerable to losing votes in swing states with many low-skilled manufacturing workers. In national-level models, we show for the first time that increasing imports (exports) are associated with decreasing (increasing) presidential incumbent vote shares. The national-level effects are large and politically consequential. We also find an Electoral College incentive to protect the manufacturing sector and to oppose trade agreements.

Economic performance and incumbents' support in Latin America

We analyze the impact of economic conditions and income shocks on the stability of incumbents' support in Latin America. A reduction in the incumbent's vote share from one election to another is a behavioral indicator of voter discontent with her performance, a crucial element of democratic accountability. In explaining the percentage change in incumbent vote, we emphasize the importance of income effects. In particular, we argue that negative economic conditions have deleterious consequences on the capacity of incumbents to sustain their electoral support. We test this hypothesis both at the aggregate and individual level using electoral and survey data. We find evidence that negative economic shocks erode support for incumbents at both levels of analysis, thus increasing our confidence on results showing the impact of pocketbook economic vote in the region.

Ties to the Rest: Autocratic Linkages and Regime Survival

The relationship between international linkages and the nature and survival of political regimes has gained increasing attention in recent years, but remains one that is poorly understood. In this article, we make three central contributions to our understanding of international linkage politics and autocratic regime survival. First, we introduce and develop the concept of “autocratic linkage,” and highlight its importance for understanding the international politics of autocratic survival. Second, we use event history analysis to demonstrate that autocratic linkage has a systematic effect on the duration of authoritarian regimes. Finally, we complement our quantitative analysis with a focused comparison of autocratic linkage politics in the Middle East. We show that variation in Saudi Arabian support for autocratic incumbents in the wake of the Arab Spring protests can be explained in significant part by variation in linkage relationships.

Managing organizational entry in China: the roles of newcomer–supervisor exchange, incumbent support, and perceived insider status

The socialization literature has long recognized the important role of perceived insider status in facilitating newcomer adjustment, but knowledge on how to cultivate this desirable psychological state is limited. This study examines newcomer–supervisor exchange as an antecedent of perceived insider status of newcomers, which in turn facilitates their social adjustment and task mastery during organizational entry. We also explore incumbent support as a boundary condition for these effects. We conducted a survey study on 320 new employees and 92 supervisors in China. This study revealed that newcomer–supervisor exchange was related positively to newcomers’ perceived insider status, and perceived insider status mediated the positive relationships of newcomer–supervisor exchange with social adjustment and task mastery. In addition, incumbent support moderated the positive relationship between newcomer–supervisor exchange and perceived insider status, as well as the positive mediated relationships of newcomer–supervisor exchange with social adjustment and task mastery through perceived insider status. Specifically, these relationships were weaker when incumbent support was higher. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.