A positive relationship between economic performance and support for incumbents is routinely taken as evidence that elections work for accountability. Recent investigations into this relationship have examined just how signals from the economy translate into popular support. However, neither selection models nor sanctioning models explicitly incorporate the actions of political elites. This article advances a strategic parties model of economic voting. Political incumbents have incentives to adjust their policy positions in response to economic conditions. When parties advocate distinct positions on economic issues, elections can be understood in terms of economic conditions. But when party positions converge, the quality of economic information declines. Incumbents can thus improve their chances of avoiding blame for a poor economy—or of claiming credit for a good one—by adjusting positions in policy space. Analyses of party positions, economic conditions, and election outcomes in 17 democracies over 35 years support this prediction.
AdamsJ.ClarkM.EzrowL.GlasgowG. (2006). Are niche parties fundamentally different from mainstream parties?American Journal of Political Science, 50, 513-529.
2.
AdamsJ.EzrowL.Somer-TopcuZ. (2011). Is anybody listening? Evidence that voters do not respond to European parties’ policy statements during elections. American Journal of Political Science, 55, 370-382.
3.
AdamsJ.MerrillS.IIIGrofmanB. (2005). A unified theory of party competition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
4.
AlesinaA.RosenthalH. (1995). Partisan politics, divided government, and the economy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
5.
AndersenR.TilleyJ.HeathA. F. (2005). Political knowledge and enlightened preferences: Party choice through the electoral cycle. British Journal of Political Science, 35, 285-302.
6.
AndersonC. J. (1995). The dynamics of public support for coalition governments. Comparative Political Studies, 28, 350-383.
7.
AndrewsJ. T.MoneyJ. (2009). The spatial structure of party competition: Party dispersion within a finite policy space. British Journal of Political Science, 39, 805-824.
8.
BarnesT.DuchR.StevensonR. (2010, April). Clarity about clarity: Sorting through competing explanations for the clarity of responsibility hypothesis. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.
9.
BeckN.KatzJ. (2009). Modeling dynamics in time-series cross-section political economy data (Cal Tech Social Science Working Paper 1304). Pasadena: California Institute of Technology.
10.
BudgeI.FarlieD. (1983). Explaining and predicting elections. London, UK: Allen & Unwin.
11.
ChongD.DruckmanJ. N. (2007). Framing public opinion in competitive democracies. American Political Science Review, 101, 637-655.
12.
ClarkeH. D.SandersD.StewartM. C.WhiteleyP. F. (2009). Performance politics and the British voter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
DownsA. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
15.
DuchR. M.StevensonR. T. (2008). The economic vote: How political and economic institutions condition election results. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
16.
EriksonR. S. (2004, July). Macro vs. micro-level perspectives on economic voting. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Political Methodology Society, Palo Alto, CA.
17.
EzrowL. (2010). Linking citizens and parties. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
18.
FearonJ. D. (1999). Electoral accountability and the control of politicians: Selecting good types versus sanctioning poor performance. In PrzeworskiA.StokesS. C.ManinB. (Eds.), Democracy, accountability, and representation (pp. 55-97). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
19.
FerejohnJ. (1986). Incumbent performance and electoral control. Public Choice, 30, 5-25.
20.
GabelM. J.HuberJ. D. (2000). Putting parties in their place: Inferring party left–right ideological positions from party manifestos data. American Journal of Political Science, 44, 94-103.
21.
GrosecloseT. (2001). A model of candidate location when one candidate has a valence advantage. American Journal of Political Science, 45, 862-886.
22.
HamannK. (2000). Linking policies and economic voting: Explaining reelection in the case of the Spanish socialist party. Comparative Political Studies, 33, 1018-1048.
23.
HearlD. (2001). Checking the party policy estimates: Reliability. In BudgeI.KlingemannH.-D.VolkensA.BaraJ.TanenbaumE. (Eds.), Mapping policy preferences: Estimates for parties, electors, and governments, 1945–1998 (pp. 111-126). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
24.
HibbsD. A.Jr. (1977). Political parties and macroeconomic policy. American Political Science Review, 71, 1467-1487.
25.
HibbsD. A.Jr. (1982). On the demand for economic outcomes: Macroeconomic performance and mass political support in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. Journal of Politics, 44, 426-462.
26.
KamC. D.FranzeseR. J.Jr. (2007). Modeling and interpreting interactive hypotheses in regression analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
27.
KemanH.PenningsP. (2006). Competition and coalescence in European party systems: Social democracy and Christian democracy moving into the 21st century. Swiss Political Science Review, 12, 95-126.
28.
KeyV. O. (1966). The responsible electorate. New York, NY: Vintage.
29.
KivietJ. F. (1995). On bias, inconsistency, and efficiency of various estimators in dynamic panel models. Journal of Econometrics, 68, 53-78.
30.
KramerG. (1983). The ecological fallacy revisited: Aggregate vs. individual-level findings of economics and elections. American Political Science Review, 77, 92-111.
31.
LaverM.BenoitK.GarryJ. (2003). Extracting policy positions from political texts using words as data. American Political Science Review, 97, 311-331.
32.
LaverM.BudgeI. (Eds.). (1992). Party policy and coalition policy in Europe. London, UK: Macmillan.
33.
Lewis-BeckM. S.StegmaierM. (2007). Economic models of voting. In DaltonR. J.KlingemannH. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political behavior (pp. 518-537). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
34.
MadisonJ.HamiltonA.JayJ. (1987). The federalist papers. New York, NY: Penguin. (Original work published 1788)
35.
MansbridgeJ. (2003). Rethinking representation. American Political Science Review, 97, 515-528.
36.
MaravallJ. M. (1999). Accountability and manipulation. In PrzeworskiA.StokesS. C.ManinB. (Eds.), Democracy, accountability, and representation (pp. 154-196). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
37.
MaravallJ. M. (2007). Accountability and the survival of governments. In BoixC.StokesS. C. (Eds.), Oxford handbook of comparative politics (pp. 910-939). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
38.
McDonaldM. D.MendesS. (2001). Checking the party policy estimates: Convergent validity. In BudgeI.KlingemannH.-D.VolkensA.BaraJ.TanenbaumE. (Eds.), Mapping policy preferences: Estimates for parties, electors, and governments, 1945–1998 (pp. 127-142). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
39.
McGrawK. (1991). Managing blame: An experimental test of the effects of political accounts. American Political Science Review, 85, 1133-1158.
40.
MeguidB. M. (2008). Party competition between unequals. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
41.
PalmerH. D.WhittenG. D. (1999). The electoral impact of unexpected inflation and economic growth. British Journal of Political Science, 29, 623-639.
42.
PiersonP. (1994). Dismantling the welfare state?New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
43.
PlümperT.TroegerV.ManowP. (2005). Panel data analysis in comparative politics: Linking method to theory. European Journal of Political Research, 44, 327-354.
44.
PowellG. B.Jr. (2000). Elections as instruments of democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
45.
PowellG. B.Jr. (2010). Consequences of elections. In LeDucL.NiemiR. G.NorrisP. (Eds.), Comparing democracies 3 (pp. 225-241). London, UK: Sage.
46.
PowellG. B.Jr.WhittenG. D. (1993). A cross-national analysis of economic voting: Taking account of the political context. American Journal of Political Science, 37, 391-414.
47.
RikerW. (1982). Liberalism against populism. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.
48.
TavitsM. (2007). Principle vs. pragmatism: Policy shifts and political competition. American Journal of Political Science, 51, 166-191.
49.
van der BrugW.van der EijkC.FranklinM. (2007). The economy and the vote: Economic conditions and elections in fifteen countries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
50.
ZallerJ. (1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
