How Lasting Is Voter Gratitude? An Analysis of the Short‐ and Long‐Term Electoral Returns to Beneficial Policy

Abstract

Dominant theories of electoral behavior emphasize that voters myopically evaluate policy performance and that this shortsightedness may obstruct the welfare-improving effect of democratic accountability. However, we know little about how long governments receive electoral credit for beneficial policies. We exploit the massive policy response to a major natural disaster, the 2002 Elbe flooding in Germany, to provide an upper bound for the short-and long-term electoral returns to targeted policy benefits. We estimate that the flood response increased vote shares for the incumbent party by 7 percentage points in affected areas in the 2002 election. Twenty-five percent of this short-term reward carried over to the 2005 election before the gains vanished in the 2009 election. We conclude that, given favorable circumstances, policy makers can generate voter gratitude that persists longer than scholarship has acknowledged so far, and elaborate on the implications for theories of electoral behavior, democratic accountability, and public policy.E lections incentivize politicians to calibrate policy to voter preferences if voters reward good and punish poor policy performance electorally. This incentivizing effect of electoral accountability crucially depends on voters' retrospective evaluations. To secure the welfare-improving effect of democracy, voters need to remember, evaluate, and reward the policies that incumbents deliver. Yet, many perceive citizens as having a short-lived memory when it comes to political issues and electoral choice (

Turning against the Union? The impact of the crisis on the Eurosceptic vote in the 2014 European Parliament elections

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Climate Impacts, Political Institutions, and Leader Survival: Effects of Droughts and Flooding Precipitation

“…There is evidence that democratic leaders reap political rewards if they show competence in managing the aftermath of disaster and ensure swift compensation for damages (Bechtel and Hainmueller 2011;Healy and Malhotra 2009). In contrast to Flores and Smith (2013), Healy and Malhotra (2009) conclude that this political benefit leads to a reduction-rather than an increase-in disaster preparedness in democracies.…”

“…Indeed, countries that experience frequent and strong natural disasters suffer lower economic damage (Neumayer et al 2014), suggesting better preparedness. On the other hand, voters also reward competent handling of crises in the aftermath of natural disasters (Bechtel and Hainmueller 2011). This creates incentives for democratic leaders to reduce, not increase, disaster preparedness (Healy and Malhotra 2009).…”

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