Hyperaccountability: Economic voting in Central and Eastern Europe

Who Gets into Government? Coalition Formation in European Democracies

“…We find higher levels of electoral volatility and less structured party systems in the East compared to the West (Bielasiak 2002). In particular, the regular and strong electoral losses of incumbent parties in almost all democratic elections over the last two decades have been emphasised (Roberts 2008). Pop-Eleches (2010) argues that we have recently seen a significant shift towards unorthodox parties, in terms of both electoral success and government participation, after voters in the East were dissatisfied with the governing record of major left-wing and right-wing parties.…”

Pocketbook vs. Sociotropic Corruption Voting

“…The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) contains satisfactory corruption items in addition to political variables, but these are only present in a single cross-section conducted as part of the 2006 Role of Government IV module. 37 See for example Birch (2003); Klasˇnja (2013a); Pop-Eleches (2010); Roberts (2008). In one of the few direct tests of the relationship between corruption and voting in a post-communist country, Slomczynski and Shabad (2011) show that perceiving a party to be corrupt made voters in Poland less likely to vote for that party.…”

Election forecasting in Lithuania: The case of municipal elections

“…Besides unemployment, another variable which could potentially be used in the forecast model is whether the local party belonged to the national government during the period studied. The theoretical justification behind such inclusion refers indirectly to the idea of ''hyper-accountability'', observed in postcommunist Central Eastern Europe: there is almost always a trend to punish the government in elections, but less so when the economy is improving and more so when it is worsening (Roberts, 2008). In Lithuania, each and every national government since 1990 has lost in the next parliamentary election (it seems that the Lithuanian electorate tends to punish the government parties, irrespective of the economic situation).…”