Strategic Politicians and the Dynamics of U.S. House Elections, 1946–86

Jacobson, Gary C.

doi:10.2307/1962060

Cited by 347 publications

(197 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In that case we confound the competence effects of term limits with pre-existing differences in average quality. In order to control for this possibility, we include a variable reflecting the governor's years of political experience prior to becoming governor, which is a standard proxy for a politician's quality, measured at the time of entering office (Bond, Covington, and Fleisher 1985;Hall and Bonneau 2006;Jacobson 1989;Van Dunk 1997). 10 Finally, we include state fixed effects, year fixed effects, and state-specific linear time trends to address any remaining unobserved heterogeneity.…”

Section: Independent Variables and Controlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling Accountability and Competence in Elections: Evidence from U.S. Term Limits

Alt

Mesquita²,

Rose³

2011

The Journal of Politics

204

127

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We exploit variation in U.S. gubernatorial term limits across states and time to empirically estimate two separate effects of elections on government performance. Holding tenure in office constant, differences in performance by reelectioneligible and term-limited incumbents identify an accountability effect: reelection-eligible governors have greater incentives to exert costly effort on behalf of voters. Holding term-limit status constant, differences in performance by incumbents in different terms identify a competence effect: later-term incumbents are more likely to be competent both because they have survived reelection and because they have experience in office. We show that economic growth is higher and taxes, spending, and borrowing costs are lower under reelection-eligible incumbents than under term-limited incumbents (accountability), and under reelected incumbents than under first-term incumbents (competence), all else equal. In addition to improving our understanding of the role of elections in representative democracy, these findings resolve an empirical puzzle about the disappearance of the effect of term limits on gubernatorial performance over time.E lections play two potential roles in representative democracy. First, elections may mitigate moral hazard by creating accountability; that is, politicians may take costly actions on behalf of voters because they know that they will only be reelected if their performance exceeds some standard (e.g., Barro 1973;Ferejohn 1986). Second, elections may mitigate adverse selection by allowing voters to select competent types who perform better, in expectation, than an unknown challenger. Moreover, in the absence of term limits, elections allow voters to retain incumbents whose competence has increased through experience (Padro i Miquel and Snyder 2006). Thus, over time elections may help voters weed out bad types and retain good types (e.g., Ashworth 2005; Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita 2008;Fearon 1999;Gordon, Huber, and Landa 2007;Gowrisankaran, Mitchell, and Moro 2008;Zaller 1998). 1 Empirically distinguishing the accountability and competence effects of elections has proven difficult. While Fearon (1999) emphasizes a trade-off between accountability and competence (or selecting good types), in many theoretical models, both effects operate in the same direction (Ashworth 2005;Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita 2006;Banks and Sundaram 1998;Besley 2006;Duggan 2000). Voters' threat to reelect only incumbents believed to be good types gives politicians an incentive to exert effort in order to try to convince voters that they are ''good'' (that is, more competent than they really are). For this reason, behavior by voters that alleviates adverse selection simultaneously alleviates moral hazard.We devise an empirical strategy to isolate the two effects by exploiting variation in the length of gubernatorial term limits. The basic argument is as follows. The relative performance of incumbents in the same term, some of whom are eligible to run again and some of whom a...

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Section: Independent Variables and Controlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disentangling Accountability and Competence in Elections: Evidence from U.S. Term Limits

Alt

Mesquita²,

Rose³

2011

The Journal of Politics

204

127

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…For example, the literature linking campaign spending to vote shares hints at welfare effects, but does not provide a direct test of the effect of campaign finance restrictions. Work in this area includes, e.g., Jacobson (1980Jacobson ( , 1985Jacobson ( , 1989, Abramowitz (1988), Green and Krasno (1988), Levitt (1994) and Gerber (1998). Also, Stratmann (2004) reports data that suggest the effectiveness of campaign spending depends on whether states have campaign contributions caps, but he is also unable to offer direct evidence on any associated welfare consequences.…”

Section: Us Senator Mitch Mcconnell (R-kentucky) For Example Claimentioning

confidence: 99%

Selling favors in the lab: experiments on campaign finance reform

Houser

Stratmann

2008

Public Choice

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Unfortunately, because informative field data on this topic are very difficult to obtain, the effects of different campaign finance strategies on election outcomes and economic welfare remain largely uninformed by empirical analyses. This paper reports data from novel laboratory experiments designed to shed light on the campaign finance debate. Our experiment is based on a model where power-hungry candidates are motivated to trade favors for campaign contributions. Our data is consistent with the model's predictions. We find that voters' revise their beliefs in response to candidate advertising in a way that is consistent with theory. Moreover, in relation to privately financed electoral competitions, in publicly financed campaigns (i) high-quality candidates are elected more frequently, and (ii) margins of victory are larger. Both of these outcomes are predicted by theory. We conduct policy experiments on various campaign finance strategies, including the widely suggested caps on private fundraising. Our results suggest that caps can improve voter welfare but do not increase the likelihood that high-quality candidates will be elected. JEL Code: D72, C9. Terms of use: Documents in

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“…While there is much variation in the occupations candidates list on the ballot, we operationalize occupation by a dummy for prior-officeholding. We may be losing some of the influence of occupation by only looking at prior office, but prior office is likely to have the strongest impact on vote choice (see the work of Jacobson, e.g., Jacobson 1989). Voters may rely on prior officeholding as cue for experience and competence and thus treat it much the same way as incumbency.…”

Section: Model Specification and Variable Operationalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%