Noisy Retrospection: The Effect of Party Control on Policy Outcomes

Abstract

Retrospective voting is vital for democracy. But, are the objective performance metrics widely thought to be relevant for retrospection—such as the performance of the economy, criminal justice system, and schools, to name a few—valid criteria for evaluating government performance? That is, do political coalitions actually have the power to influence the performance metrics used for retrospection on the timeline introduced by elections? Using difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity techniques, we find that US states governed by Democrats and those by Republicans perform equally well on economic, education, crime, family, social, environmental, and health outcomes on the timeline introduced by elections (2–4 years downstream). Our results suggest that voters may struggle to truly hold government coalitions accountable, as objective performance metrics appear to be largely out of the immediate control of political coalitions.

Democratic Party Control Reduces Gender Inequality

“…7.7.To check this assumption, we regressed past outcomes on contemporaneous party control. In line with existing studies (Caughey, Warshaw, and Xu 2017; Dynes and Holbein 2019), the results, which are displayed in Table in the online Appendix do reveal one violation. However, the violation is limited to one out of 12 cases (8.3%) and the median effect size (across all 12 variables) is extremely low (only 4.3% of the standard deviation of the outcome variables).…”

“…To gauge the impact of partisan control on gender inequality, we employ two complementary tests: (1) a regression discontinuity design (RDD) and (2) a difference‐in‐difference design (DiD). Both have been used extensively in recent years to estimate the effects of partisan control of state governments (Beland and Unel 2018; Caughey, Warshaw, and Xu 2017; Dynes and Holbein 2019; Leigh 2008).…”

Mobilize for Our Lives? School Shootings and Democratic Accountability in U.S. Elections

“…That said, from the (predominantly successful) instances of voter retrospection in the published literature, there appear to be a few conditions theorized to promote accountability. First and foremost, though some have argued that citizens sometimes respond to irrelevant events (e.g., Achen and Bartels 2017;Healy, Malhotra, and Mo 2010;Sances 2017), problems that government has control over are more likely to promote retrospection (Achen and Bartels 2017;Ashworth 2012;Dynes and Holbein 2020;Healy and Malhotra 2013). Second, the literature has suggested that when citizens are affected by negative events and are able to trace them to a set of responsible decision-makers, retrospective voting is likely to occur (Ashworth 2012;Berry and Howell 2007;Healy and Malhotra 2013;Mettler 2011;Pierson 1993).…”

“…For a thorough discussion of what policymakers do or do not control and the extent to which voters hold government accountable for things that are outside of government control, seeAchen and Bartels (2017), Ashworth, Bueno de Mesquita, and Friedenberg (2018),Dynes and Holbein (2020), and Fowler and Hall (2018).2 Indeed, one could argue that gun violence is more preventable by government policy than other natural disaster. Alternatively, some have argued that voters punish incumbents for natural disasters because voters expect government to be responsible for the preparation for and mitigation of negative shocks (e.g.,Healy and Malhotra 2013).…”

Politics and the Distribution of Federal Funds: Evidence from Federal Legislation in Response to COVID-19

“…A first contribution of our analysis is thus to add to the extensive body of work on the consequences of partisan control at the local and state levels (Alt and Lowry, 1994;Poterba, 1994;Ansolabehere et al, 2002;Reed, 2006;Ferreira and Gyourko, 2009;Bertocchi et al, 2020;Dynes and Holbein, 2020). Papers in this literature have investigated some of the factors we consider here.…”