A New View of Political Accountability for Economic Performance

Chappell, Henry W.; Keech, William R.

doi:10.2307/1956116

Cited by 87 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…The short time frame used here thus assumes that at least in this respect members of Congress are like voters appear to be. (For a contrary view on this matter see Chappell and Keech, 1985 The results of this analysis provide strong support for each of our hypotheses. All coefficients are in the predicted direction.…”

Section: Analysis and Resultssupporting

confidence: 64%

Congressional Appropriations and the Electoral Connection

Kiewiet

McCubbins

1985

The Journal of Politics

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. Analyses of appropriations for thirty-seven federal agencies between fiscal years 1948 and 1979 provided broad support for our hypotheses. First, Congress has been more generous in awarding appropriations during election years than during nonelection years. Appropriations are also influenced by prevailing economic conditions. Higher unemployment leads to higher levels of appropriations, especially for public works agencies. Conversely, Congress has responded to high rates of inflation by holding down appropriations. And as in other areas of public policy, parties matter: the larger the percentage of Democrats in the House of Representatives, the more funds agencies were appropriated. The strong empirical support garnered by our electoral connection model thus adds some much needed balance to the conventional incrementalist view of federal government spending.

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Section: Analysis and Resultssupporting

confidence: 64%

Congressional Appropriations and the Electoral Connection

Kiewiet

McCubbins

1985

The Journal of Politics

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“…Our evidence cannot reject the view that voters are rational, a result that echoes conclusions of Chappell and Keech (1985), Peltzman (1990), and Alesina and Rosenthal (1989). We showed that voting behavior in presidential and congressional elections could reflect marginal voters' awareness of economic constraints and the implications of vote choices for their long-term economic well-being.…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 57%

“…Then, we 4Several empirical studies have suggested that voters might be aware of macroeconomic constraints. Chappell and Keech (1985), for one, developed a model of presidential approval based on an explicit voter understanding of macroeconomic constraints as described by an expectations-augmented Phillips curve. This approach was limited by the adoption of an expectational Phillips Curve as the relevant constraint, with an implicit assumption that policymakers' influences on output and unemployment were purely transitory.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Rationality of Economic Voting Revisited

Suzuki

Chappell

1996

The Journal of Politics

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“…Beck argues that one ought to think of economic forecasts as conditional expectations where the conditioning variables include competence, administration, and other political variables. He goes on to criticize the strong rational-expectations approach in the popularity-function literature (e.g., Chappell and Keech 1985;Chrystal and Peel 1985) and presents empirical evidence indicating that such a model is suspect. (See also the criticisms of the rational-expectations approach in Hudson 1982, chap.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expectations and Preferences in British General Elections

1994

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T he idea that observed contemporary behaviors are strongly linked to expectations about future outcomes has become so central for economists that much of economic theory has been rewritten to take explicit account of this concept (Begg 1982; Hudson 1982, chap. 3). Political scientists have also shown a growing interest in expectations, with future prospects proving to be particularly useful in studying certain aspects of electoral behavior. The now-common use of the notions of viability and electability, as well as the classification of voters as straightforward, sincere, or strategic, exemplify this trend (Abramson et al. 1992;Bartels 1988;Niemi, Whitten, and Franklin 1992). The simple act of voting is increasingly conceived of in terms of utilities (voters' preferences) and probabilities (voters' assessments of candidates' chances of winning).Two crucial questions are at the nexus of the votes-expectations literature: How do people form their expectations and What are the links between expectations and votes? We address these questions with data collected by the Gallup organization. This unique data set includes not only the usual measurement of voters' preferences among parties but also a systematic tracking of voters' expectations about the outcome of the next general election.1 The fact that this information is available on a monthly basis for more than a decade permits systematic study of the expectations formation process and of the links between expectations and votes not only during election periods but also in less intense, interelection times.2 The data are thus attractive despite their obvious limitations. 3 We shall present a simultaneous-equation votesexpectations model, 4 paying particular attention to the expectations formation process. 5 We then present our findings, which show a modest effect of expectations on voting behavior and stronger and more variegated effects-including "instantaneous" adjustments-of voting intentions on expectations. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings in the conclusion. A VOTES-EXPECTATIONS MODELThe votes-expectations literature has been mainly concerned with the existence and form of a pattern of reciprocal causation between voters' preferences and their assessments of the electoral campaigns (i.e., the parties' standings). Consistent with this perspective, we examine here two possibilities: (1) that voting intentions are affected by expectations about the likely winner of the next general election (bandwagon effect) and (2) that expectations about which party will win the next election are dependent on current vote intentions (whether through a sophisticated treatment of information or a simple projection effect).Practically speaking, what is required is that we devise and estimate a simultaneous equations system formed of a vote equation and an expectations equation. As is standard in simultaneous equations models, we estimate our model using two-stage least squares. To obtain consistent estimates, we must pay particular attention to model ...

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A New View of Political Accountability for Economic Performance

Cited by 87 publications

References 20 publications

Congressional Appropriations and the Electoral Connection

Congressional Appropriations and the Electoral Connection

The Rationality of Economic Voting Revisited

Expectations and Preferences in British General Elections

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