Democracy and Government Performance: Holding Incumbents Accountable in English Local Governments

Abstract

The link between government performance and support for incumbents is a key mechanism of accountable government. We model the vote share of incumbent administrations in local government as proportional and nonproportional responses to public service performance. We evaluate the models using a panel data set covering performance and elections from 2001 to 2007 in English local governments where an incumbent party or coalition was up for reelection. We control for the previous vote, whether the incumbent administration is of the national governing party, and local economic conditions. We find evidence for a nonproportional, performance threshold hypothesis, which implies that voters' behavior is affected by clear gradations of performance. Only the difference between low performance and at least mediocre performance matters. There is no reward for high performance. Instead our findings suggest negativity bias in the relationship between performance and electoral support for incumbents.

Compared to What? How Social and Historical Reference Points Affect Citizens’ Performance Evaluations

“…Simon (1939: 106) The abundance of quantitative performance information available to the public raises the fundamental question of how citizens make sense of all this data (Boyne et al 2009;James 2011a;2011b;Charbonneau and Van Ryzin 2015;Baekgaard and Serritzlew 2015;Marvel 2015;Olsen 2015). School rankings are offered to inform voice and exit in educational choice.…”

“…In short, negativity bias denotes that negative information has more profound effects on attitudes and behavior than positive information of a similar magnitude (Baumeister et al 2001). The negativity bias has also been found relevant for understanding how citizens respond to performance information (Boyne et al 2009;James 2011a;James and Moseley 2014). In terms of implications, the negativity bias has been noted as the underlying driving force for blame avoidance among managers and politicians (Weaver 1986).…”

Weapon of the Weak: One-Minute Speeches in the Israeli Parliament

“…They seem to be cognizant both of the economic and democratic benefits derived from citizenship in the Jewish state despite recent legislative efforts to constrain the Arab political elite (Frisch, 2011). Given their position as part of the permanent opposition (Boyne et al, 2009), we would expect them to use the parliamentary tool with the least constraints more extensively than members of the majority group. Therefore, we posit:…”

Incumbency in Multi-Level Political Systems and Recruitment Advantage: The Case of the Czech Regional Assemblies

“…Moreover, voters may regard them as more promising if they think his or her previous electoral success means they have better qualities [Trounstine 2009;Stone et al 2010]. Other sources of advantage may be the quality of the incumbents' performance in offi ce during the previous term or merely the ease of access to resources, in particular higher visibility than their opponents [Lascher 2005], easier access to funding from sponsors and news media coverage (especially where the government controls the content of local media) [Berry and Howell 2007;Trounstine 2009;Boyne et al 2009], or the authority to realign the borders of electoral districts. Incumbent advantage was found to be stronger in more professionalised offi ces that provide more resources that incumbents can use in the campaign [Holbrook and Tidmarch 1991;Carey, Niemi and Powell 2000].…”