Punishing local incumbents for the local economy: economic voting in the 2012 Belgian municipal elections

Abstract

After decennia of research on economic voting, it is now established that the state of the economy affects voting behaviour. Nevertheless, this conclusion is the result of a focus on predominantly national-level economies and national-level elections. In this paper, we show that at a local level as well, mechanisms of accountability linked to the economy are at work.The local economic context affected voting behaviour in the 2012 Belgian municipal elections, with a stronger increase of unemployment rates in their municipality significantly decreasing the probability that voters choose an incumbent party. Additionally, we observe that voters are not opportunistically voting for incumbents who lower tax rates. Instead, voters seem to be holding local incumbents accountable for local economic conditions. We hence conclude that voters care about economic outcomes, not about what specific policies are implemented to reach these outcomes.

Foreign Direct Investment and Elections: The Impact of Greenfield FDI on Incumbent Party Reelection in Brazil

“…I find that greenfield investment has a substantively large and statistically significant effect on the electoral performance of the party of the incumbent mayor, especially in municipalities with a population below 200,000 (approximately 5,535 of Brazil's 5,570 municipalities). The findings of this article introduce a new dimension to the literature on the mass politics of globalization, and also speak to literatures in comparative politics on Brazilian municipal elections (e.g., Brambor & Ceneviva, 2011;Brollo & Nannicini, 2012;Ferraz & Finan, 2008;Gingerich, 2014;Klašnja & Titiunik, 2017;Sakurai & Menezes-Filho, 2008) and economic voting at the local level (e.g., Dassonneville, Claes, & Lewis-Beck, 2016;Fauvelle-Aymar & Lewis-Beck, 2011;Vermeir & Heyndels, 2006).…”

“…30. This is especially a concern for local elections (for summary, see Dassonneville, Claes, & Lewis-Beck, 2016). 31.…”

“…39. Existing analyses of municipal elections in Brazil do not control for economic growth, as is typical of other studies of economic voting at the local level (e.g., Dassonneville et al, 2016;Vermeir & Heyndels, 2006). In the case of Brazil, growth calculated from GDP per capita is highly volatile.…”

Political budget cycles revisited: Testing the signalling process

“…For instance, Cerda and Vergara (2007), Boyne at al. (2009), Bosch (2016), Dassonneville et al (2016), and Lindgren and Vernby (2016) show that local economic conditions are relevant for local elections. Although each study takes a different approach, all find that local unemployment reduces the re-election probability of local incumbents.…”

Retrospective voting in the Italian 2013 election: a sub-national perspective

“… 6 Furthermore, unemployment is the standard index of the real economy used when the economic vote is tested at the sub-national level (Johnston et al ., 2000; Cutler, 2002; Dassonneville et al ., 2016; Riera and Russo, 2016). Provinces represent the lowest administrative level in Italy for which that measure is consistently provided. …”