Electoral accountability requires that voters have the ability to constrain the incumbent government’s policy-making power. We express the necessary conditions for this claim as an accountability identity in which the electoral system and the party system interact to shape the accountability of parliamentary governments. Data from 400 parliamentary elections between 1948 and 2012 show that electoral accountability is contingent on the party system’s bipolarity, for example, with parties arrayed in two distinct blocs. Proportional electoral systems achieve accountability as well as majoritarian ones when bipolarity is strong but not when it is weak. This is because bipolarity decreases the number of connected coalitions that incumbent parties can join to preserve their policy-making power. Our results underscore the limitations that party systems place on electoral reform and the benefits that bipolarity offers for clarifying voters’ choices and intensifying electoral competition.
The recent successes of populist radical right (PRR) parties have caused major upheavals across European political landscapes. Yet, the roots of their rising popularity continue to be widely debated. We contribute to these debates by advancing a thus far underexplored argument of rising rent burden as key to understanding contemporary PRR vote and nativist attitudes. Rising rents lie at the heart of growing concerns related to housing (un)affordability and (over)burden across Western democracies, directly affecting the economic and social well-being of substantial numbers of citizens. PRR parties, we argue, stand to gain from politicizing such concerns in distinct economic and nativist terms, especially amidst challenges like the European refugee crisis, which provoked an urgent need to house unprecedented inflows of refugees. Drawing on individual-level panel data from Germany, we uncover a strong relationship between rising rents, PRR vote, and hostile attitudes toward refugees. In calling attention to rising rents, our study adds important insights into scholarship on the politics of housing markets not only from the perspective of home ownership and housing assets, but also rents. In so doing, we also refine understandings of the conditions under which economic factors shape PRR support
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