Does Federalism Prevent Democratic Accountability? Assigning Responsibility for Rates of COVID-19 Testing

Abstract

Does federalism prevent citizens from holding governments accountable for their actions? The pandemic represents the ideal scenario for testing the effects of federalism on democratic accountability because citizens are highly motivated to hold governments accountable for preventing or failing to prevent the rapid transmission of the virus. Previous research suggests that a number of institutional and political factors complicate the accountability function in federal systems. We add to this literature by assessing the effect of one political factor, exclusivity (measured in terms of policy variation at one level), on accountability. The coronavirus pandemic provides a unique opportunity to assess this factor given the high levels of issue saliency, media attention, and low levels of intergovernmental and interparty conflict it has generated. Drawing on original data from the May 2020 Democratic Checkup Survey and public data from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory, our preliminary findings suggest that interprovincial policy variation with respect to coronavirus testing is not correlated with public assessments of the adequacy of provincial testing, and so it seems that Canadians are not able to assign responsibility to the correct level of government despite ideal conditions for doing so.

Introduction

Clarity of responsibility is critical to democratic accountability (Anderson, 2000; Powell and Whitten, 1993; Whitten and Palmer, 1999). Citizens vote for the incumbent party when times are good and against it when times are bad (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2000: 183). Federalism, however, complicates democratic accountability by potentially reducing institutional clarity (Hobolt et al., 2013). The existence of multiple governments within a country has been found to obscure issue salience, policy goals, and responsibility for spending, among other things (Arceneaux, 2006; Cutler, 2008; Wlezien and Soroka, 2011).

In this article, we build on this literature by investigating the ability of Canadian citizens to assess government performance during a period of minimal intergovernmental conflict, high-issue saliency and heightened media attention regarding COVID-19 testing, and varying jurisdictional exclusivity with respect to coronavirus testing across the provinces (Chung, 2020; Cutler, 2017). If critics of federalism are right that its complexity overwhelms the ability of citizens to hold governments accountable for their actions, then we should find no relationship between citizen attitudes and variation in provincial implementation outcomes (as measured by the normalized number of tests administered in each province). Alternatively, correctly linking government action and responsibility suggests citizens are both aware and interested enough to meet the standards of accountability that underpin democracy.

Drawing upon original data from the May 2020 Democracy Checkup survey (Harell et al., 2020) and testing data from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory (2020), we present some preliminary evidence to answer the following question: To what extent does federalism (and particularly, exclusivity) affect citizen assessments of provincial government performance regarding adequate testing for COVID-19?

Political Conditions and Accountability

In general, federalism places a high demand on voters seeking to assign responsibility for government actions relative to voters in non-federal systems (Arceneaux, 2006; De Vries et al., 2011; Wilson and Hobolt, 2015). This is especially true in countries where formal institutions do not make clear which level of government is responsible for particular responsibilities, or where different parties are in power at the federal and provincial or state levels (Anderson, 2000; Rudolph, 2003). Yet, these demands can be overcome when group-serving biases are activated (Hobolt and Tilley, 2014) or when particular issues are highly salient and accessible (Arceneaux, 2006) due to heightened media attention. In these cases, the costs of acquiring the necessary information to assign responsibility are much lower relative to the benefits.

Existing research suggests that these considerations apply to Canada. For instance, Wlezien and Soroka (2011: 42) find that “federal welfare preferences are driven in part by provincial policymaking and not just federal spending” and as a result, citizens are “partly confused about which level of government is doing what.” Cutler (2008: 629) agrees, finding that certain political conditions complicate the ability of citizens in federal systems to properly assess and attribute responsibility for government performance. Overcoming this deficit places a heavy informational demand on voters. An issue must be salient and garner substantial media attention; intergovernmental and inter-party conflict must illuminate rather than obscure which government is responsible; and voters must be aware that a policy action emanates from only one level of government. In this way, “. . . [f]ederal institutions affect electoral accountability through the politics they generate” (Cutler, 2017: 1042). Ultimately, his analysis concludes that only issue saliency and exclusivity matter.

The pandemic presents a unique opportunity to test these arguments. Recent data suggest that the pandemic has generated high issue saliency for Canadians (Abacus Data, 2020), high levels of media coverage (Poirier et al., 2020), and low levels of intergovernmental and interparty conflict (Merkley et al., 2020; Schertzer and Paquet, 2020) across provinces. What does vary is the degree of policy activity – rates of testing for COVID-19 – at the provincial level. In essence, the pandemic allows us to test the effects of federalism on democratic accountability because citizens are highly motivated to hold governments accountable for preventing or failing to prevent the rapid transmission of the virus.

There has been broad cross-provincial convergence on such measures as the closing of schools and restaurants (Breton and Tabbara, 2020). As well, there is now widespread acceptance on the centrality of testing for the virus to control its spread and deal with the inevitable second and third waves of infections (CBC, 2020). Yet, there is significant variation in the rate of testing across the provinces (Chung, 2020), which is in their domain. This variation allows us to ask, “is the level of citizen satisfaction in a province consistent with the level of testing by that province?” We assume that citizen satisfaction with government performance is associated with adequate testing capacity because more testing means that governments and citizens have better information to avoid and prevent exposure to the virus. It also allows governments to justify controversial policy decisions relating to expanding or limiting mobility and social gathering restrictions.

If Cutler’s (2008, 2017) findings are correct, we should see provincial variation in citizen assessments toward the adequacy of testing according to the rate of testing in each province. We should also see citizen satisfaction with testing levels correlate strongly with support for the provincial government’s approach to handling the coronavirus outbreak more generally. If no such relationships exist, then it may be that Canadians during pandemics are overwhelmed by this complex intergovernmental problem (Paquet and Schertzer, 2020) and are unable to sort out who is responsible for policy outcomes regardless of favorable political conditions. Formally, we expect the following:

• H1. As the number of individuals tested increases, citizen satisfaction toward adequate provincial testing will also increase.

• H2. As citizen satisfaction toward adequate provincial testing increases, citizen satisfaction toward the provincial government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak will also increase.

Methods and Data

Our analysis draws upon survey data from the May 2020 Democracy Checkup (n = 2071) and COVID-19 individual testing data from the National Microbiology Laboratory. ¹ To test H1, we evaluate respondents’ satisfaction with their province’s testing policy by asking them to indicate their opinion on whether or not “there has been adequate testing for COVID-19 in the area in which you live.” We focus on Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan due to sample size considerations. ² We compare these results against individual testing data provided by the National Microbiology Lab. As of 20 May, approximately 1.37 million individual COVID-19 tests have been administered, with substantial variation from region-to-region (National Microbiology Laboratory, 2020).

To normalize these testing data, we calculate and measure the number of COVID-19 tests administered per 100,000 respondents per province. ³ These figures range from 2305 tests/100,000 in British Columbia to 4949 tests/100,000 in Alberta. We then plot these data against the proportions of respondents who believe there has been adequate COVID-19 testing in their respective regions in Figure 1. Our results suggest no statistically significant relationship between satisfaction and higher rates of individual testing, and so we find no support for H1.

Figure 1.

Adequate Testing by Test Volume.

We then use the arguably stricter test of knowledge of which level has jurisdiction over testing as a robustness check of our earlier findings. ⁴ Figure 2 plots the relationship between satisfaction with testing and correct assignment of responsibility for testing. While visually it mimics the pattern found in Figure 1, the relationship is again not statistically significant.

Figure 2.

Adequate Testing and Assignment of Responsibility.

Some might argue that opinion toward adequate testing is not a good proxy for whether respondents correctly attribute responsibility to the appropriate level of government. To explore this argument further, we draw upon our preliminary data to assess H2, which states, as citizen satisfaction toward adequate provincial testing increases, citizen satisfaction toward the provincial government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak will also increase. To assess H2, we examine responses to the Democracy Checkup survey question, “how satisfied are you with the following governments’ handling of the coronavirus outbreak?” In total, 80% of respondents were very or fairly satisfied with their provincial government, 18% were not very or not at all satisfied, and 2% did not know, suggesting general support for provincial efforts toward addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. We then plot these data against opinions toward adequate testing by province in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Adequate Testing by Provincial Satisfaction of Handling Outbreak.

Figure 3 suggests that respondents are not able to assign responsibility to the correct level of government during the coronavirus pandemic. The results of the Pearson’s r (–0.46, p = 0.36) indicate a statistically insignificant relationship, thus providing no support for H2. In short, the preliminary evidence suggests that our survey respondents are not able to assign responsibility to the correct level of government when it comes to coronavirus testing in Canada.

Discussion and Conclusion

The coronavirus pandemic represents an ideal context for assessing the effect of political conditions on citizen attitudes toward government responsibility. COVID-19 has prompted an information rich environment that should enhance the capacity of citizens to correctly allocate responsibility for clearly related policy action (Wilson and Hobolt, 2015). Federal systems, however, can make it difficult for citizens to hold governments responsible for their actions because of the complex ways in which they divide constitutional jurisdiction, financial resources, and non-financial asset ownership, all of which require citizens to expend additional cognitive effort to assign blame and credit (Roy and Alcantara, 2020).

Testing for COVID-19 is a provincial function of high salience that should allow citizens to overcome the information costs imposed by federalism, given that this issue has attracted a remarkable level of media attention and is widely held to be critical to an effective response to the pandemic. Building on previous work on federalism and clarity of responsibility (Arceneaux, 2006; Cutler, 2017; Wilson and Hobolt, 2015), we explored whether variation in the fulfilling of this provincial function is broadly consistent with the general public’s sense of satisfaction with how well it has been performed in their province. Surprisingly, our expectations are not met, with no obvious link between level of satisfaction and assignment of responsibility. We offer the following thoughts on why this might be and future research directions.

Studies of government accountability in federal states have noted the divide between institutional and individual level models and effects, the frequency of non-findings, and the conditioning effect of political context on the capacity of voters to assign responsibility to the correct government (e.g. Arceneaux, 2006: 748; Cutler, 2017: 1038). Cutler’s findings rely on institutions prompting political conditions that in turn allow those same institutions to help assign responsibility (Cutler, 2017). Other approaches suggest these two effects can be understood independently of each other (Hobolt et al., 2013). It is possible that our models are underspecified. Disentangling these various factors might better be managed through a multistage model that allows institutional and contextual factors to shape accountability mechanisms (Rudolph, 2003).

Institutional design and the coherence of governing coalitions provide known means of mapping government responsibility (Hobolt et al., 2013). This approach should be amenable to considering how intergovernmental negotiations shape policy responsibility. Such a model would isolate a known source of voter confusion and more closely reflect the complex reality of policy making in federal states. Cross-level policy coordination would then be analyzed as coalitional behavior, while policy unilateralism (competition) should clarify institutional responsibility (Bakvis and Brown, 2010).

Following Cutler (2017), coterminous inclusion of political conditions would allow consideration of how events sharpen or blunt the desire and capacity of citizens to connect political outcomes with government actions. For example, how information costs covary with political interest, which policy areas are most susceptible to voter engagement, and how policy crises (intensity) drive these effects (see Iyengar et al., 2010). Context would be most directly associated with demand for responsibility, and institutions with its supply. Such an approach has the advantage of linking the debate over policy responsibility in federal states to the broader discussion of demand and supply side accountability as key features of democratic governance (see, for example, Dimova, 2020).

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-psw-10.1177_14789299211001690 – Supplemental material for Does Federalism Prevent Democratic Accountability? Assigning Responsibility for Rates of COVID-19 Testing

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-psw-10.1177_14789299211001690 for Does Federalism Prevent Democratic Accountability? Assigning Responsibility for Rates of COVID-19 Testing by John Kennedy, Anthony Sayers and Christopher Alcantara in Political Studies Review