Risk Attitudes and the Incumbency Advantage

The Dead Hand of the Past? Toward an Understanding of “Constitutional Veneration”

“…2 ''Americans Would Swap Electoral College for Popular Vote, '' Lydia Saad, Gallup Politics, October 24, 2011, accessed 11/26/14, http://goo.gl/f1j5aC. day. 3 The results for both experiments support the notion that individuals' attachment to a constitution disposes them to reject constitutional amendment proposals, even when accounting for alternative explanations such as individuals' political and policy preferences, knowledge of the proposal (Lupia 1992;Lupia 1994b;Bowler and Donovan 1998;Christin et al 2002;Kriesi 2007), and risk orientations (Kam and Simas 2010;Kam 2012;Kam and Simas 2012;Eckles et al 2014). To be clear, these results are perhaps attributable in part to factors such as status quo bias, but as we shall explain in what follows, they cannot be reduced to these other explanations-our findings suggest that, in addition to the reasons individuals resist change in general, there is something about constitutions per se that biases individuals against proposals that would result in constitutional change.…”

“…Moreover, we would not expect to find a difference in the size of effect between the state and federal constitutional change treatments on the same issues. Finally, because risk averse individuals are more susceptible to status quo bias (Kam and Simas 2012;Eckles et al 2014), we would expect our treatment effects to be especially pronounced among risk averse respondents if our results were driven simply by status quo bias. Yet our treatment effects do not significantly differ based on respondents' risk orientations (see Online Appendix Table 3).…”

“…Individuals' risk orientations also make them more or less susceptible to status quo bias. For instance, Kam and Simas (2012) find that risk-averse individuals are more likely to support candidates for political office that exhibit qualities consistent with the status quo, such as stability, certainty, experience, and governing competence (see also Eckles et al 2014). Similarly, Eckles and Schaffner (2011) observe that risk-averse individuals are less supportive of proposed military interventions when they have been primed with subtle hints about the risks associated with involvement.…”

“…Extant research in social psychology and behavioral economics offers many plausible explanations for why individuals may resist changing a constitution that have little to do with ''reverence'' for it, such as general status quo bias (Samuelson and Zeckhauser 1988;Kahneman et al 1991;Ritov and Baron 1992) or risk aversion (Kam and Simas 2010;Kam 2012;Kam and Simas 2012;Eckles et al 2014). But we report the results of two studies that find evidence of a specific bias in favor of the constitutional status quo.…”

Sectoral diversification as insurance against economic instability

“…Their incentives to do so are particularly high if voters are risk‐averse. The literature on voter behavior clearly finds that risk‐averse voters are more likely to re‐elect the incumbent while risk‐seeking voters opt for the challenger (see e.g., Eckles et al ; Kam & Simas, ). Thus, elected politicians who want to be re‐elected should be expected to have a taste for economic stability and the incentives to use sectoral diversification as insurance.…”