Party cues and yardstick voting

Abstract

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. Politicians within any given party generally exhibit a degree similarity in terms of (political) viewpoints. Moreover, they are often constrained to follow general party lines on certain policy issues. Finally, they may be more likely to mimic one another than politicians from another party. Hence, parties provide important cues on how politicians will act once elected. The present paper assesses the implications of such party cues for the traditional model of yardstick voting (where voters use what they observe in neighbouring jurisdictions to judge the performance of their incumbent). It is shown that the information content of what happens in neighbouring jurisdictions differs depending on whether or not the same party governs this jurisdiction. More specifically, we find that voters might still take neighbouring jurisdictions into account, but should distinguish between jurisdictions where the same or a different party is in power. The results of the model are in line with recent empirical observations in Sweden and the United States. Terms of use: Documents in

A spatial cross‐sectional analysis of political trends in Italian municipalities

“…Each agent shows a propensity to behave in the same way as his reference group. Generally, politicians within the same party more likely show a common behaviour in order to implement fiscal policies (Geys and Vermeir 2008) because they have similar preferences (Hazan 2003) and incentives (Jones and Hudson 1998). They are driven by the central government when they implement their policies at the local government level (Rodden and Wibbels 2005).…”

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Value for money? German local government efficiency in a comparative perspective

“…The reason is that such models generally normalise the provision of public goods to one (cf. Besley and Case, 1995;Revelli, 2002;Geys and Vermeir, 2008c), which implies that "lower cost of provision can be interpreted as higher government efficiency" (Geys and Vermeir, 2008c, 472).…”

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“…An additional explanation has been put forward by Geys and Vermeir (2008), who suggest that politicians belonging to the same party tend to collude by forming a "political cartel." This paper differs from previous theoretical works because it focuses on social interactions rather than strategic ones.…”