How Lasting Is Voter Gratitude? An Analysis of the Short‐ and Long‐Term Electoral Returns to Beneficial Policy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6232372 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael M Bechtel (0000-0002-6080-5367, Washington University in St. Louis), Jens Hainmueller (0000-0001-8214-9041, Stanford University) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 852-868 |
| Publication date | 2011-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00533.x |
| OpenAlex | W2110936351 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 220 |
| References cited | 38 |
Dominant theories of electoral behavior emphasize that voters myopically evaluate policy performance and that this shortsightedness may obstruct the welfare‐improving effect of democratic accountability. However, we know little about how long governments receive electoral credit for beneficial policies. We exploit the massive policy response to a major natural disaster, the 2002 Elbe flooding in Germany, to provide an upper bound for the short‐ and long‐term electoral returns to targeted policy benefits. We estimate that the flood response increased vote shares for the incumbent party by 7 percentage points in affected areas in the 2002 election. Twenty‐five percent of this short‐term reward carried over to the 2005 election before the gains vanished in the 2009 election. We conclude that, given favorable circumstances, policy makers can generate voter gratitude that persists longer than scholarship has acknowledged so far, and elaborate on the implications for theories of electoral behavior, democratic accountability, and public policy
Accountability · Democracy · Economic growth · Economics · Gratitude · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Scholarship · Term (time · Welfare · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Law · Social Policy and Reform Studies
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| Unique citing works | 220 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 15,71 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2026 (15) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 217 |