The Effect of Election Proximity on Government Responsiveness and Citizens’ Participation: Evidence From English Local Elections

Abstract

Does political engagement depend on government responsiveness? Identifying the drivers of political action is challenging because it requires disentangling instrumental from expressive motives for engagement and because government responsiveness is likely endogenous. We overcome the first challenge by studying citizens’ reporting of street-problems—a form of participation arguably driven by instrumental considerations. We overcome the second challenge by taking advantage of variation in local elections timing in England’s district authorities. We report three key results. First, local governments address requests faster in the months leading to elections. Second, street-problem reporting increases in (pre)electoral periods. Third, the increase in requests sent in preelection periods is driven by districts in which government responsiveness is higher. These findings show that, individuals consider expected benefits when choosing to undertake at least some instrumental forms of participation. Our results also underscore the importance of temporal factors that increase the perceived benefits of one’s political engagement.

Do Autocrats Respond to Citizen Demands? Petitions and Housing Construction in the GDR

“…Authoritarian complaint systems are similar to constituency service in democracies. Like 311 calls in New York and San Francisco (Christensen and Ejdemyr 2020) or "FixMyStreet" requests in the United Kingdom (Dipoppa and Grossman 2020), they provide public officials with information about citizens' everyday grievances and permit them to improve service provision (Staadt 1996;Gorgulu, Sharafutdinova and Steinbuks 2020).…”

Political Corruption Cycles: High-Frequency Evidence from Argentina’s Notebooks Scandal

“…A third possible threat is that citizens interact more frequently with state officials in pre-electoral periods (see, e.g., Dipoppa & Grossman, 2020), which mechanically increases the number of instances in which bureaucrats may extort bribes. The data that I exploit, however, documents large bribes paid by construction companies in exchange for public contracts, which is unaffected by the frequency of citizens’ interaction with state officials.…”

“… 6. A large literature has examined political business and budget cycles: incumbents increase spending when elections are upcoming (see, e.g., Aaskoven & Dreyer Lassen, 2017 for a review), even in authoritarian regimes (see, e.g., Blaydes, 2011; Magaloni, 2006). Other studies have examined other factors that vary systematically with election proximity, such as the propensity of elected judges of behaving punitively (Huber & Gordon, 2004), the political involvement of bureaucrats (Figueroa, 2016), mafia attacks to politicians (Daniele & Dipoppa, 2017), citizen demands and the responsiveness of politicians to these demands (Dipoppa & Grossman, 2020), and political violence (Harish & Little, 2017). …”

Government Responsiveness in Developing Countries

“…Analyzing data from 311 lines (or the equivalent) allows for the study of variation in politician responsiveness to the complaints that emerge. Two recent studies,Christensen and Ejdemyr (2020) andDipoppa and Grossman (2020) find that responsiveness-measured as the speed with which complaints are remediedincreases in the lead-up to elections in New York City and San Francisco and in the UK, respectively Dipoppa and Grossman (2020). further show an increase in citizen complaint-making in the lead-up to elections that coincides with this increase in responsiveness.Similar ICT complaint systems are increasingly available in some low-and middle-income countries.…”