We present two models that shed light on two issues in the political economy of populism: incumbents who refuse to give up office following a democratic election; and politicians gambling with major policy shifts when their consequences are uncertain. In the democratic transition of power, common knowledge about the veracity of the election process enables citizens to threaten incumbents with protests if they attempt to retain their seats in power. If doubt over electoral integrity prevails, office-seeking incumbents sometimes reject electoral rules. In considering policy gambles, politicians supply policy shifts in response to voters and elites vying for a greater share of economic output. When the mapping from policy to outcomes is uncertain, voters opt for policy gambles, even though these are detrimental to their ex ante welfare, to redress the division of output. These models underscore the importance of institutions that address the source of each coordination failure.

The comparative literature on democratization has shown that election trust depends as much on subjective factors as on the objective conditions of the process. This literature, however, has thus far overlooked the consequences of candidates refusing to concede an electoral defeat. This letter argues that a disputed electoral outcome further inflames negative perceptions of electoral integrity among voters who supported a losing candidate. We bring support for this claim from a multilevel regression that includes data from the AmericasBarometer surveys on almost 100,000 respondents across 49 elections in 18 Latin American countries. We combine these responses with an original database of disputed elections in the region. The empirical findings demonstrate the eroding effect of challenged election outcomes on voters' election trust, particularly among those who voted for a losing candidate. The findings underscore an intuitive yet untested pattern: candidates' refusal to accept the electoral outcome is a strong signal among their supporters, increasing their distrust on the integrity of the process.

Expert evaluations about countries form the backbone of comparative political research. It is reasonable to assume that such respondents, no matter the region they specialize in, will have a comparable understanding of the phenomena tapped by expert surveys. This is necessary to get results that can be compared across countries, which is the fundamental goal of these measurement activities. We empirically test this assumption using measurement invariance techniques which have not been applied to expert surveys before. Used most often to test the cross-cultural validity and translation effects of public opinion scales, the measurement invariance tests evaluate the comparability of scale items across any groups. We apply them to the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) dataset. Our findings suggest that cross-regional comparability fails for all eleven dimensions identified in PEI. Results indicate which items remain comparable, at least across most regions, and point to the need of more rigorous procedures to develop expert survey questions.

We compare two widely publicized measures of state electoral integrity in the United States: the Electoral Integrity Project's 2016 U.S. Perceptions of Electoral Integrity Survey and the Pew 2014 Elections Performance Index. First, we review the theoretical and empirical differences between the two measures and find that they correlate at a surprisingly low level across the states. Second, given this low correlation, we examine the component parts of these indices and find that both are capturing multiple dimensions. Third, we examine how the components and the individual indicators that comprise each measure are linked to citizens' stated perceptions about electoral integrity. Throughout the article, we articulate a set of preemptive recommendations that urge researchers to be cautious and deliberate when choosing among measures of electoral integrity to use in future empirical studies.

Electoral accountability is typically identified with retrospective economic voting even though it is widely recognized that explaining electors’ assignment of responsibility also implies considering issues other than the economy. Recently, scholars have also stressed the role of election quality in contributing to democratic legitimacy of elected authorities. In this perspective, electoral integrity as a valence issue would influence voters’ behaviour, structuring attitudes about accountability in substantial ways. This effect would also be moderated by individual- and country-level factors. I test these assumptions in 23 countries worldwide using a multilevel analysis of data from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey. Results indicate that the strength of the link between perceptions of electoral integrity and vote for the incumbent seems to be affected by individual characteristics such as partisanship, while it is also moderated by specific contextual characteristics such as government clarity of responsibility and pluralism of the media.

We propose a model of public response to politicized election reform. In this model, rival partisan elites send signals on the need and consequences of a proposed reform, with partisans in public adopting those positions. We apply this to test how state use of voter identification laws corresponded with public evaluations of the conduct of a state's elections. We find that the relationship between photo identification laws and confidence in state elections was polarized and conditioned by party identification in 2014. Democrats in states with strict photo identification laws were less confident in their state's elections. Republicans in states with strict identification laws were more confident than others. Results suggest strict photo identification laws are failing to instill broad-based confidence in elections, and that the reform could correspond with diminished confidence among some.

Much discussion of electoral integrity focusses on new democracies. This paper explores the determinants of electoral integrity in a major established democracy in order to begin to identify drivers of electoral integrity for comparative scholars to exploit further. It does so through a novel measure of electoral administration in Britain which is brought together with comprehensive data on spending on electoral administration, whether concurrent elections were being held, size of electorate, number of constituencies administered, type of administration overseeing local electoral administration, and various socio-economic measures. The results establish a range of relationships to electoral integrity which will inform subsequent debates on election quality in other democracies, whether advanced or otherwise. In particular, the findings point to the importance of administrative resources in delivering electoral integrity in advanced democracies.