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Retrospective Voting and the Polarization of Available Alternatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2019

Dieter Stiers  and
Ruth Dassonneville
Dieter Stiers*
Affiliation:
Centre for Political Science Research, KU Leuven, Parkstraat 45 box 3602, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Ruth Dassonneville
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal, Département de science politique, C.P. 6128 succursale Centre-ville, MontréalQCH3C 3J7
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Government cohesiveness is known to moderate retrospective voting. While previous work on this topic has focused on characteristics of the government, we build on the literature on clarity of responsibility and the literature on valence to argue that the extent to which government and opposition are ideologically distinct also moderates retrospective voting. Two alternative expectations follow from these two theoretical perspectives. While the clarity of responsibility framework leads to the expectation that a larger difference between government and opposition will strengthen retrospective voting, the valence literature presumes that retrospective voting is stronger when ideological differences are small. Using the data of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project, we find evidence that is in line with the clarity of responsibility framework: the higher the degree of ideological polarization between government and opposition, the larger the effect of retrospective performance evaluations on the vote.

Résumé

Résumé

La cohésion gouvernementale est connue pour modérer le vote rétrospectif. Bien que les travaux sur ce sujet se soient concentrés sur les caractéristiques du gouvernement, nous nous prévalons de la bibliographie sur la clarté de la responsabilité et de celle de valence pour soutenir que la mesure dans laquelle le gouvernement et l'opposition sont idéologiquement distincts modère également le vote rétrospectif. Deux autres attentes découlent de ces deux perspectives théoriques. Alors que la clarté du cadre de responsabilité conduit à s'attendre à ce qu'une plus grande différence entre le gouvernement et l'opposition renforce le vote rétrospectif, la bibliographie de valence suppose que le vote rétrospectif est plus fort lorsque les différences idéologiques sont faibles. En utilisant les données du projet Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), nous trouvons des éléments probants qui correspondent à la clarté du cadre de responsabilité : plus le degré de polarisation idéologique entre le gouvernement et l'opposition est élevé, plus l'effet des évaluations rétrospectives du rendement sur le vote est important.

Keywords

Retrospective votingelectoral accountabilitypolarizationclarity of responsibilityincumbent voting
Type
Research Article/Étude originale
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 99 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2019

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