Electoral Accountability (electoral + accountability)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Short versus Long Coalitions: Electoral Accountability and the Size of the Public Sector

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2006
Kathleen Bawn
This article examines the policy consequences of the number of parties in government. We argue that parties externalize costs not borne by their support groups. Larger parties thus internalize more costs than small parties because they represent more groups. This argument implies that the public sector should be larger the more parties there are in the government coalition. We test this prediction using yearly time-series cross-sectional data from 1970 to 1998 in 17 European countries. We find that increasing the number of parties in government increases the fraction of GDP accounted for by government spending by close to half a percentage point, or more than one billion current dollars in the typical year. We find little support for the alternative claim that the number of legislative parties affects the size of the public sector, except via the number of parties in government. [source]


Legitimacy and the quality of democracy

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 196 2009
Leonardo Morlino
This article discusses the connections between legitimacy and the quality of democracy. The multiple dimensions of the quality of democracy are presented and it is shown that legitimacy is at the core of the definition of responsiveness. Citizens' reactions to government policies are analysed. Also stressed are the limits and constraints of considering responsiveness only in relationship to citizens' attitudes towards government and institutions. Other dimensions are taken into account, particularly electoral accountability. [source]


Partisan Polarization and Congressional Accountability in House Elections

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2010
David R. Jones
Early research led scholars to believe that institutional accountability in Congress is lacking because public evaluations of its collective performance do not affect the reelection of its members. However, a changed partisan environment along with new empirical evidence raises unanswered questions about the effect of congressional performance on incumbents' electoral outcomes over time. Analysis of House reelection races across the last several decades produces important findings: (1) low congressional approval ratings generally reduce the electoral margins of majority party incumbents and increase margins for minority party incumbents; (2) partisan polarization in the House increases the magnitude of this partisan differential, mainly through increased electoral accountability among majority party incumbents; (3) these electoral effects of congressional performance ratings hold largely irrespective of a member's individual party loyalty or seat safety. These findings carry significant implications for partisan theories of legislative organization and help explain salient features of recent Congresses. [source]


The Politics of Social Harmony: Ruling Strategy and Health Care Policy in Hu's China

ASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 2 2009
Bin Yu
This study seeks to explain the causes of social welfare policy change in a single-party authoritarian system. Using the evolution of Chinese health care policy as an example, it discerns why the Hu Jintao administration opted for a compensation-oriented welfare policy paradigm in the absence of adequate interest articulation and apparent electoral accountability, despite the virtual collapse of the Chinese social welfare system during the 1990s. I explore the hypothesis that a high level of political pressure, coupled with a high degree of economic openness, drove the Chinese Communist Party to alter its ruling strategy, a political paradigm that best ensures its monopoly on political power and consequently produces distinct implications for public policy outputs. This study suggests that authoritarian regimes can and do compensate the citizenry under certain circumstances. Further, it also reveals a self-adaptation process initiated by a single-party authoritarian system. [source]