Electoral Accountability: Recent Theoretical and Empirical Work

Ashworth, Scott

doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-031710-103823

Cited by 418 publications

(229 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…After all, by the time of the campaign, voters had already learned about the incumbent from his performance in office. This suggests that See recent articles by Dewan and Shepsle (2011) and Ashworth (2012) for a review of the agency and spatial modeling approach to elections. voters learn using role-specific technologies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral Competition, Control and Learning

Dewan

Hortalà-Vallvé

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Abstract.We study an agency model in which voters learn about both an incumbent and an opponent. They observe the incumbent's policy record and update their beliefs about his opponent via a campaign. Although the former is relatively more informative, it can be costly for the voter to learn about the incumbent from her policy record. This is because policy reforms, that allow a voter to learn an incumbent's ability, are risky and so can leave the voter worse off. Then the voter may prefer that the incumbent takes safer actions. The efficient level of reform-the one preferred by the voter-balances the value of learning with the expected policy cost/benefits. In a world where the opponent's campaign is uninformative reform can be too low. This is due to the incumbent's fear of failure. Or, it can be too high: the incumbent gambles on success. We show that the presence of an opponent that can reveal information via a campaign exacerbates these inefficiencies. An incumbent who anticipates the effect of an opponent's campaign on voter beliefs is more likely to make inefficient policy choices. Further, such campaigns can lead to an overall welfare loss. This is so when they do not reveal much about the opponent's ability and yet have an impact on the incumbent's policy choice.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral Competition, Control and Learning

Dewan

Hortalà-Vallvé

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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“…We thus focus on prospective economic voting, where the selection motive for evaluating government competence is particularly sensitive to variation in the quality of performance signals (Ashworth 2012;Fearon 1999). …”

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confidence: 99%

Credible Sources and Sophisticated Voters: When Does New Information Induce Economic Voting?

Alt¹,

Marshall²,

Lassen³

2016

The Journal of Politics

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When does new economic information cause voters to re-evaluate the government's competence, and ultimately vote economically? Since politically-relevant information is often conveyed by actors with incentives to influence voter perceptions, the credibility of information sources can vary significantly. This article randomly varies whether voters receive an aggregate unemployment forecast from the central bank, government or main opposition party using a survey experiment in Denmark with access to detailed panel data. We find that politically sophisticated voters discern differences in institutional credibility and the political cost of the signal, and update their unemployment expectations accordingly. Despite failing to differentiate political costs, unsophisticated voters still substantially update their expectations. However, while sophisticated voters intend to engage in substantial prospective economic voting, unsophisticated voters do not link their new unemployment expectations to their vote intention. These findings suggest that economic information supports economic voting most when it is credible and reaches sophisticated voters.

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“…Furthermore, we borrow from the political agency literature with adverse selection. The latter studies how the voter updates her beliefs about the politicians' type after having observed their performance in office (Ashworth, 2012;Banks andSundaram, 1993, 1996;Besley, 2006;Fearon, 1999;Persson and Tabellini, 2000, and others). The fourth strand of related literature combines political competition between policy-motivated citizen-candidates with electoral accountability and analyzes the trade-offs thereof (Bernhardt et al, 2011;Van Weelden, 2013, 2015.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Incumbents' Performance and Political Polarization

Dodlova

Zudenkova

2016

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Incumbents' Performance and Political Polarization Abstract This paper studies the relationship between incumbents' performance and political polarization, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a spatial model of political competition in which the voters use the incumbent's performance in office to update their beliefs about his competence. A better performance leads to the incumbent's electoral advantage and so allows him to announce a more extreme platform closer to his bliss point. Therefore, conditioned on reelection, a better incumbent's performance leads to higher political polarization. We use the data on the incumbents' performance in natural disaster relief and the ideological positions they take in the U.S. House of representatives in 1953-2010. The empirical evidence shows that a better performance in post-disaster recovery is associated with more extreme ideological positions of the corresponding incumbents. These and other empirical results are in line with the model predictions. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-codes: D720, H840, Q540.

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Electoral Accountability: Recent Theoretical and Empirical Work

Cited by 418 publications

References 55 publications

Electoral Competition, Control and Learning

Electoral Competition, Control and Learning

Credible Sources and Sophisticated Voters: When Does New Information Induce Economic Voting?

Incumbents' Performance and Political Polarization

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