Benchmarking across Borders: Electoral Accountability and the Necessity of Comparison

Abstract

W hen the economy in a single country contracts, voters often punish the government. When many economies contract, voters turn against their governments much less frequently. This suggests that the international context matters for the domestic vote, yet most research on electoral accountability assumes that voters treat their national economies as autarkic. We decompose two key economic aggregates-growth in real gross domestic product and unemployment-into their international and domestic components and demonstrate that voters hold incumbents more electorally accountable for the domestic than for the international component of growth. Voters in a wide variety of democracies benchmark national economic growth against that abroad, punishing (rewarding) incumbents for national outcomes that underperform (outperform) an international comparison. Tests suggest that this effect arises not from highly informed voters making direct comparisons but from "pre-benchmarking" by the media when reporting on the economy. The effect of benchmarked growth exceeds that of aggregate national growth by up to a factor of two and outstrips the international component of growth by an even larger margin, implying that previous research may have underestimated the strength of the economy on the vote.

A Bark But No Bite: Inequality and the 2014 New Zealand General Election

“…For example, economic growth in New Zealand is frequently compared to or 'benchmarked' with economic growth in Australia, much as the strength of the dollar, tax and wage rates, and house prices relative to income are often compared. The role that the media plays in communicating these perceptions has been described as 'pre-benchmarking' (Kayser and Peress 2012). Achen and Bartels (2016) discuss the example of shark attacks on New Jersey beaches that adversely affected the local economy and later influenced voting in a presidential election.…”

Context Matters: Economic Voting in the 2009 and 2014 European Parliament Elections

“…Anderson, 2000;Lewis-Beck & Stegmaier, 2013), but also because of the nature of EP contests. As elections are taking place simultaneously across the EU, we suspect benchmarking (Kayser & Peress, 2012) is more likely to take hold, where citizens compare the economic performance of their countries to others, and in doing so, are more likely to be making sociotropic rather than pocketbook comparisons. In any event, our measure of economic performance only allows us to explore sociotropic motivations.…”

Credit or debit? The effect of issue ownership on retrospective economic voting

“…In this regard, issue ownership functions as a yardstick for comparison for voters which helps them evaluate government economic performance. This links to the general idea of voters' need for comparisons and the numerous studies which demonstrate that voters systematically compare policy outcomes across time (Palmer and Whitten 1999) as well as across borders (Kasper et al 2016;Kayser and Peress 2012).…”