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Policies that promote the common good may be politically infeasible if legislators representing 'losing' constituencies are punished for failing to promote their district's welfare. We investigate how varying the local and aggregate returns to a policy affects voter support for their incumbent. In our first study, we find that an incumbent who favours a welfare-enhancing policy enjoys a discontinuous jump in support when their district moves from losing to at least breaking even, while the additional incremental political returns for the district doing better than breaking even are modest. This feature of voter response, which we replicate, has significant implications for legislative politics generally and, in particular, how to construct politically feasible social welfare-enhancing policies. In a second study, we investigate the robustness of this finding in a competitive environment in which a challenger can call attention to a legislator's absolute and relative performance in delivering resources to their district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is expected that the number of elected female mayors in local government will increase globally, yet no major progress has been registered lately despite the increased focus on the topic. At the European level, no country exceeds 40% female mayors or other leaders of the municipal council (or equivalent), with the highest descriptive representation of 39.1% in Iceland. Following the 2020 elections in Romania, only around 5% of mayors were female with a strong over-representation of male mayors. The current study aims to analyze the male–female distribution of mayors, the degree of re-election, the relationship between the number of candidates and re-election of incumbents, and how these factors impact female political representation at the local level in Romania. Thus, we argue that a high degree of re-election of incumbents may be a barrier to women's access to the position of mayor. In addition, it is important to determine whether female incumbents are as successful as their male counterparts in being re-elected. While there is an extensive body of literature on incumbency that covers a range of topics, there is a gap in the literature regarding the proposed subject. The present research aims to fill the gap and contribute to a better understanding of the political representation of women in Eastern Europe. We utilized a dataset of Romanian elections from 2008 to 2020 to test our hypotheses. Our findings indicate that during the studied period, more than 95% of mayors were male, the re-election was a frequent occurrence in Romania with a percentage ranging from 70.82% (2008–2012) to 72% (2012–2016 and 2016–2020), and female incumbents were just as likely to be re-elected as their male counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has had tremendous impacts on political, economic and social developments across the globe. Although some studies show that voters tend to hold incumbent parties accountable for managing the pandemic, the results of others suggest that the rally-round-the-flag strategy might be at plan. We contend that voters tend to hold the incumbent party accountable, even during an exogenous shock, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesize that more stringent government responses to tackle the pandemic and more COVID-19 casualties tend to decrease the electoral support for incumbent parties. Using original data from 67 national elections in 56 electoral democracies from mid-March 2020 to May 2022, the empirical results support our hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains the survival of the AKP in Turkey's late stage of autocratization (2017-present) through its strategy of shifting the primary drivers of competition from individual parties to pre-electoral alliances. Confronted with a decline in popular support in 2015 June elections, the article argues that the AKP created uneven patterns of competition via the system of pre-electoral alliances so that it could institutionalize a 'Rikerian offense' on the salient Turkish-Kurdish cleavage and establish an authoritarian power-sharing mechanism with its former challenger, the Turkish nationalist MHP. To illustrate the shift toward uneven patterns of electoral competition via such incumbent strategies, the article conducts a two-part analysis: It first examines the landscape of competition among parties (2002-2015) and second, evaluates competition among both parties and alliances (2018-2023) at the national and district levels in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Turkish economy presented a complicated picture ahead of the 2023 election, with significant currency depreciation and soaring inflation yet robust growth and stable employment levels. How did voters' economic perceptions shape election results in such a context? Drawing on Turkish Election Study surveys, this study reaches two main conclusions. First, while the average evaluation of the economy in the electorate was quite poor, there is a sharp divergence across incumbent supporters and others: The incumbent Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) supporters' evaluations have changed little since the previous election in 2018, yet those of other voters have deteriorated significantly. Second, the opposition seems to have failed in convincing large parts of the electorate that they would manage the economy better than Erdoğan. Overall, economic voting appears to have worked as expected, and the unwavering economic evaluations of likely AKP voters and the perceived incompetence of the opposition seem to have helped Erdoğan to win another term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political order following rebel victory in civil wars has seen remarkable variation. While some rebellions transform their victories into durable regimes, others do not. This article develops a typological framework to assess the ability, and inability, of victorious rebellions to capture the state after overthrowing incumbents, with a focus on Africa. We argue that these outcomes - state capture, failed state capture, or mixed - depend on two key dimensions of political and military centralization before victory: (1) the distribution of power between rebel organizations participating in the civil war and (2) the communal structure within them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accountability relationship between voters and elected members of Congress (MCs) hinges on the potential for citizens to learn about legislator behaviour. In an era of declining local newspapers, local television coverage of MCs potentially fulfils this important role. However, few studies have comprehensively examined the determinants of contemporary MC coverage by local television news broadcasts. In this paper, we leverage a vast database of local television news broadcast transcripts spanning two years to identify which factors explain MC coverage. We find that MCs receive little coverage outside the general election campaign season. Media market and campaign-specific factors are associated with more exposure when coverage occurs. Finally, we find that within competitive elections, incumbents receive only a marginal advantage in coverage. These findings provide a springboard to explore further questions regarding Congress, local media, and political accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of some legislatures enjoy long political careers, whereas elsewhere turnover is rampant. This variation is consequential since high-incumbency assemblies may facilitate legislative expertise at the expense of social representation. We explore cross-national differences in re-election (incumbency) rates by identifying 'supply' conditions such as legislative resources that benefit incumbents as well as 'demand' conditions such as political corruption that affect voters' willingness to re-elect incumbents. We hypothesize that legislative perquisites help incumbents win re-election, but only if there is relatively high public confidence in politics, as reflected in low corruption levels. We tested our argument using OLS and instrumental variable regression and new global data on sixty-eight democracies (2000–18) covering 288 elections and over 55,000 legislators. We found that legislative resources help incumbents get re-elected only under relatively low levels of political corruption. In contrast, under severe corruption, such resources can depress re-election rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the political consequences of rising household debt in the context of fiscal austerity? I argue that cuts in welfare benefits privatize social obligations as voters address ensuing financial shortfalls by borrowing money. Debt re‐commodifies individuals and shifts their electoral support from incumbents to opposition and anti‐establishment parties by provoking feelings of political neglect, economic vulnerability, and strong emotional responses. I examine this argument by leveraging spatial and temporal variation in the rollout of Universal Credit (UC), a large‐scale welfare reform in the United Kingdom. Using fine‐grained administrative data on unsecured debt, I demonstrate that fiscal austerity generated an increase in indebtedness, which lowered support for the incumbent Conservatives and strengthened support for Labour and the UK Independence Party (UKIP). I then use individual‐level survey data to explore the mechanisms that link debt and political behavior. The results suggest that rising indebtedness increases the political costs of welfare retrenchment and creates new political cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do politicians' track records and campaign messaging interact and affect voters' welfare? We analyze this question theoretically and experimentally. In the theoretical model, which we implement in the experiment, politicians choose how much of an economy's resources to allocate to the citizenry—keeping the remainder for themselves—and then face reelection against a challenger. Both incumbents and challengers have private information about their own quality that determines the economy's level of resources. We vary whether candidates can send campaign messages and the level of variability in candidates' quality. We observe that both higher‐quality variability and allowing campaigning benefit citizens by allowing them to better select and hold accountable higher‐quality officials. Also, when incumbents have performed poorly or when quality variability is high, challengers' negative campaigning (criticizing the incumbent) increases and incumbents' positive campaigning (emphasizing their own strengths) decreases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper hopes to enhance understanding about entrenched grievance in a couple of ways: (a) Initially, the paper reviews how entrenched grievance reflects melancholic states of mind in terms of its avoidance of the pain of loss and change. But the main contribution of the paper is likely to be found in (b), that is, via detailed clinical material, the paper illustrates how earnest efforts on the part of the analyst to bring understanding may lead to cognitive entrapments such as the convictions incumbent in the “knowing” analyst. Further, that this knowing analyst may need to become aggrieved, that is, narrow, impatient and concrete towards her patient’s entrenchment, and then to recogize this plight in herself before she can genuinely hear her patient’s grievance about her from a wider view, that is as a complaint from the “lively self”, deserving recognition. The clinical detail demonstrates that such recognition softened the patient’s grievance, allowing both members of the dyad to become more collaborative and open to the pains and growth available from mourning states of mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the conditions under which major infrastructural investments generate electoral returns. It addresses when and how the constraints imposed by myopic voters under democracy can be overcome. We argue that sustained policy spillovers are critical to broadening the pool of beneficiaries and yielding significant returns to the incumbent in the medium to long run. We make this case by analyzing Luz para Todos (LPT)—a large-scale rural electrification scheme implemented in Brazil by the Workers' Party (PT). Leveraging the LPT's quasi-experimental allocation, we document its positive and persistent impact on the PT's vote support several years after the program started running. We then illustrate the mechanism of policy spillovers by showing the impact of the LPT on the provision of education in targeted areas. Our findings suggest that infrastructure policies are more likely to generate electoral returns when the policy provision entails spillover effects through other policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that larger legislatures reduce the electoral power of incumbent parties in the executive. The electoral effects of legislature size have been largely overlooked by a literature that emphasizes its impact on policies. I estimate the effects of municipal council size on the performance of the local incumbent party in gubernatorial, presidential, and mayoral races in Brazil. The regression discontinuity design exploits variation from a law that set nonlinear council size caps after 2012. In a nutshell, every additional seat triggers a 5 percentage point vote loss for the candidates backed by the mayor's party. Additional evidence suggests that these losses are a consequence of a breakdown in the political brokerage relationships that often characterize developing democracies: in Brazil, mayors exchange patronage for the councilors' electoral support. Larger councils raise this transaction cost for mayors, more so when the council and mayor have unaligned electoral incentives at the state/national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do voters react to an ongoing natural threat? Do voters sanction or reward incumbents even when incumbents cannot be held accountable because an unforeseeable natural disaster is unfolding? We address this question by investigating voters' reactions to the early spread of COVID-19 in the 2020 French municipal elections. Using a novel, fine-grained measure of the circulation of the virus based on excess-mortality data, we find that support for incumbents increased in areas that were particularly hard hit by the virus. Incumbents from both left and right gained votes in areas more strongly affected by COVID-19. We provide suggestive evidence for two mechanisms that can explain our findings: an emotional channel related to feelings of fear and anxiety, and a prospective-voting channel, related to the ability of incumbents to act more swiftly against the diffusion of the virus than challengers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions do incumbents support, tolerate, or try to rein in armed groups within their borders? The paper argues that incumbents strategize toward armed groups in ways that help them manage the ruling coalition and remain in power. I find that incumbents support armed groups in provinces where provincial politicians have defected from the ruling coalition to opposition parties, recruiting armed groups to deliver the province in national elections with fraud and violence and punish elite defectors. Where incumbents are not fighting to keep provinces in the ruling coalition, I show that they tolerate non-dissident groups that enjoy social contracts with local communities, and try to contain their dissident counterparts. Incumbents are likely to repress predatory armed groups, dissident and non-dissident alike. Doing so helps boost elite and mass support for incumbents and project central government power into the province. The argument was inductively built with comparative case studies from Nigeria and then evaluated in Kenya. The findings contribute to an important research agenda on government-armed group relationships and carry implications for security sector aid and reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A change of government or minister constitutes a stress test for the relationship between ministers and bureaucrats. The new political masters may question the loyalty of incumbent bureaucrats and seek to replace them. However, the relationship between political changes and administrative turnover is poorly understood in meritocratic systems. This article analyses how changes of either government or minister affect the turnover of permanent secretaries in Denmark and Norway (1970–2020). Whereas ministers are completely reliant on career bureaucrats in pure meritocratic systems, they are supported by political appointees in hybrid meritocratic systems. The article investigates whether the effect of political changes on administrative turnover is mediated by the presence or absence of political appointees. Changes of government increase the risk of administrative turnover in Norway (hybrid system), but there are no such effects in Denmark (pure system), suggesting that political appointees potentially undermine the permanence of career bureaucrats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does austerity influence incumbent support? Existing studies struggle with conceptualizing the evolution of austerity's impact over time, estimating a causal effect, and analysing the reactions of different voters. This study theorizes that the effect of austerity on electoral preferences is not immediate, but gradual, as voters find out about the measures' consequences via the media. It leverages a survey in the field at the time of the austerity announcement in Romania in 2010, additional survey data collected immediately after this event and comprehensive daily media coverage to show that austerity measures do not have an immediate impact on incumbent support, anticipated turnout and expressing a vote preference. Instead, there is a gradual effect that is associated with increased media attention to budgetary cuts. This natural experiment allows the estimation of the immediate causal effect of austerity on electoral intentions. Difference‐in‐differences (DID) models show that the announcement triggered a massive loss of support for the incumbent among those who had voted for the party in power only a few months before. Austerity also led to the demobilization of the governing party's supporters. There is no evidence that those most directly affected by the spending cuts are more likely to punish the incumbent party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies have documented incumbency advantage for electoral candidates. A largely unrelated strand of literature has shown that perceived competence of candidates, as inferred from their physical appearance, also predicts their electoral success. We draw upon the framework of statistical discrimination and the dual‐system theory of human cognition to understand the relationship between a political candidate's vote share, physical appearance, and incumbency status. Voters possess relatively richer information about incumbents compared to challengers. Perceived competence of candidates, as inferred from their physical appearance, is therefore expected to have a relatively weaker influence on voters' decisions to vote for incumbents. Data from Australian state elections support this prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not all governments survive until the next scheduled election. Some are replaced during their term in office by executives with a different party composition and/or portfolio distribution. Others are able to be 'reborn' as the successor government, undergoing only minimal changes. Such variation has to date received scant attention in studies on government durability. By classifying non-electoral replacements according to the degree of ministerial turnover, this article shows that new cabinets are often similar to their predecessors. It hypothesises that the likelihood of this pattern occurring is greater: when members of the current cabinet face bargaining problems in forming a very different cabinet, as in the case of surplus (unnecessary) parties in oversized coalitions; when the policy distance between the parliamentary median party and the current opposition widens; and when the executive's economic performance discourages opposition parties from forming new coalitions with some incumbent parties. The risk of experiencing different types of replacement is estimated using data on Western European cabinets (1946–2021). Consistent with the hypotheses, the results indicate that governments are able to return to power almost untouched after their termination if they are oversized, if the opposition is far from the legislative median voter, and if inflation grows during a government's tenure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of the incumbent state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) on the births of new private‐owned enterprises (POEs) in China is a central concern for the government and society. In this paper, we apply agglomeration theories to distinguish the linkages between SOEs and POEs. Using China's 2008 economic census, the 2007 Input‐Output Table, and the 2005 population census, we measure the formation of new POEs at the city‐industry level, and the agglomeration forces of distance proximity to inputs, outputs, labor, and technology. More explicitly, we measure the extent to which local SOEs provide relevant inputs, consume outputs, employ similar workers, and use similar technology. Our findings indicate that overall, incumbent SOEs hinder the formation of new POEs. For manufacturing, the entry of new POEs is significantly lower in places where more upstream SOEs are concentrated. For services, the entry of new POEs is significantly lower in places where more upstream and downstream SOEs are concentrated. However, the agglomeration effects from the incumbent POEs are either insignificant or significantly positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coordination on mass protest plays an important disciplining role in ensuring compliance with electoral rules, with elections serving as a public signal of the incumbent's popularity. But the link between the informativeness of the election and the enforceability of electoral rules hinges crucially on the veracity of the electoral process. We model how doubt about electoral integrity influences compliance with electoral rules. Our analysis explains why electoral rules in advanced democracies are less resilient, and incumbents less willing to step aside, than suggested by the standard model of electoral turnover. We clarify how incumbent behaviour responds to changes in the cost of protest, and external overtures that make stepping down more attractive. Our findings contribute to the debate on the role of equilibrium multiplicity in models of mass uprisings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We offer a candidate-centered amendment to incumbent-referendum models of presidential election outcomes that dominate the literature on post-WWII presidential elections. Our argument is that incumbent-challenger differences in character qualifications and issue concerns of the electorate should be included. These differentials, which recognize the advantage or disadvantage of the incumbent relative to the challenger party candidate have strong effects on election outcomes independent of the state of the economy, the number of years the incumbent party has held the White House, and presidential approval. Properly understood, in addition to the state of national affairs, presidential election outcomes are about the choice presented to the mass public. This added element means that candidates matter for election outcomes and electoral change in ways that have not been properly appreciated in existing scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a time of declining support for democracy and intensifying rivalry between democracies and autocracies, understanding how nondemocratic nations portray U.S. elections is vital. And yet, despite the enormous attention U.S. presidential elections attract around the world, the manner in which international media makes sense of U.S. campaigns remains unclear, with only a limited number of comparative studies conducted and even fewer looking at non-Western, nondemocratic nations. Furthermore, current comparative frameworks remain biased toward Western conceptualizations of media and their role in democratic countries, with nondemocratic or transitional democracies used to support theoretical models developed elsewhere. Thus, this study offers strategic media narratives as an alternative means to understand transnational similarities and differences in election reporting emerging from four non-Western, nondemocratic nations by comparing their coverage of the 2020 and 2016 U.S. presidential campaigns. Results show substantial shifts in the nature of coverage, albeit with some similarities between campaigns. Trump remained negatively discussed in both elections, but with reporting in 2020 associating his leadership character to his policies. Whereas Clinton was negatively covered in 2016, Biden was neutrally discussed in 2020 with focus on his character and policies drawn in contrast to Trump. Both political parties were negatively covered, with Chinese, Russian, and Iranian narratives associating Republicans and Democrats as pursing confrontational relations with each nation. Most importantly, discussions of U.S. democracy were substantially more frequent and negative in 2020 compared to 2016. Taken together, the study contributes theoretically and empirically to the study of comparative election research by theorizing the role of narratives in international campaign coverage, addressing the gap in research into nondemocratic media reporting of international elections, and provides one of the few cross-time comparisons enabling insight into the drivers of how and why coverage of U.S. elections change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature highlights the complexities of the relationship between voting, protest action and service delivery within Southern African democracies. We explore the relationship between these variables for South Africa by generating a new dataset from various sources. Although this relationship has been explored before, the existing evidence is mixed. The results from this study therefore bring a fresh perspective, especially at a time during which the political power of the incumbent African National Congress has been declining. We find that improvements in service delivery are not significantly associated with an increase in votes for the incumbent party, indicating that accountability is not the main motivation for South Africans' voting decisions. However, we find a statistically significant negative correlation between protest action and service delivery, providing evidence of the increasing importance of protest action as a form of political accountability in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our knowledge about how voters decide which candidate(s) to vote for under preferential-list proportional representation (PLPR) systems remains limited. In particular, it is debated whether incumbent MPs enjoy an electoral advantage over outsiders also under PLPR. We argue that such an incumbency advantage critically depends on candidate visibility (in the media) and differs across voters with varying levels of political knowledge. Our empirical analysis combines candidate information with rich individual-level voting data collected via "mock ballots" in the 2014 Belgian PartiRep election study. We show that the vote premium linked to incumbency increases with increasing media visibility, and while high-visibility incumbents outperform incumbents among the entire electorate, low-visibility incumbents enjoy an advantage only among knowledgeable voters. The results contribute to a better understanding of candidate voting and the incumbency advantage in PLPR. They also have implications for campaign strategies and the regulation of media access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the literature highlights the relevance of informal rules for candidate selection, empirical research has mainly focused on formal rules and procedures. This article contributes to our understanding by investigating how the informal rules employed by political parties impact on intra-party competition. Using the example of district nominations in Germany, and based on a longitudinal mixed methods design, the inductive analysis reveals five central informal rules: the Incumbency Rule, the Information Rule, the House Power Rule, Fairness Rules and Power-sharing Rules. These rules shape the expectations and behavior of those involved in candidate selection and have a significant impact on various aspects of intra-party competition. They decrease the number of aspirants, reduce intra-party conflict and emphasize the role of local party leaders in organizing and controlling intra-party competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the 2022 general elections in Papua New Guinea, covering both electoral quality and election outcomes. Overall, the 2022 elections were very troubled. In parts of the country, serious violence and electoral fraud were major issues. In other parts of the country, polling was less fraught. However, some problems, such as the roll, were serious almost everywhere. In terms of election outcomes, one outcome – only two women won seats – was predictable. However, the election brought puzzling results too: in particular, incumbents were re-elected at the highest rate ever. And the largest party won a larger share of seats than has been the case in any election since 1982. Neither of the latter two results appear to have been a direct product of electoral fraud. Rather, the party outcome stems from a turn-of-the-millennium rule change. High incumbent re-election rates remain a genuine puzzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In yardstick competition, the availability of information pertaining to neighbouring jurisdictions is crucial for enabling voters to increase political accountability. Using a three-jurisdiction yardstick competition model and three measures of incumbent performance, the present study shows that politicians in isolated jurisdictions (i.e. ones that do not experience media spillover) are more likely to capture private rents. In contrast, in a jurisdiction connected to two neighbouring jurisdictions (i.e., ones with media spillovers), politicians are less likely to engage in rent extraction. An interesting finding is that the number of links (media spillovers) has a direct influence on status quo bias, namely that the more the voter is exposed to yardstick competition, the less status quo bias she exhibits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Descriptive representation is shaped by more than the number of seats group members win—it is also informed by how group members hold on to seats long after election day. Drawing from the literatures on women of color, women, and minorities in politics, this study argues that the relationship between incumbents and descriptive representation is different among groups that hold distinctive political positioning and power. To uncover those differences, the article introduces a new measure called descriptive maintenance, which accounts for a group's ability to retain descriptive representation in a seat across unique group members and elections. This multidimensional approach expands current conceptualizations by treating incumbency and descriptive representation as interrelated, group-level, phenomena. This framework is tested using nearly 60,000 observations of state elections data in an analysis focused on a group of state legislative incumbents that has rarely been explicitly examined, and yet outnumbers all others: white men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study content analyzes the news coverage of two major presidential candidates—one populist challenger, the other female incumbent—in the 2020 Taiwan election. A nation-wide survey of voters and their newspaper uses was also utilized to verify the association between partisan news reliance and candidate evaluations. Based on the concept of partisan press, the study confirms that the coverage is highly polarizing and that it includes more horse race analysis than discussion of serious issues. Sexist and misogynistic terms were used more often by party-opponent (Blue-camp) newspapers to describe the female incumbent. The male populist candidate was portrayed more often in a personal fashion than the female candidate. The voters' primary newspaper uses were found to be positively associated with their candidate evaluations and preferences. The study sheds new light on populist vis-à-vis gendered election coverage in the context of an Asian democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the electoral legacies of civil war violence offers a puzzle. While one strand of research argues that indiscriminate rebel violence will have no effect on the electoral success of rebel-aligned parties, another argues that such violence will harden anti-rebel political attitudes in the long term. This article reconciles these conflicting predictions by examining post-conflict political attitudes over the short and medium term. We hypothesize that the organizational weaknesses that both underpin and result from indiscriminate rebel violence during civil war will constrain the vote mobilization strategies of rebel-aligned parties in post-civil war elections, eventually leading to a reversal of fortune in the medium term. We assess our hypothesis in the empirical context of the state of West Bengal in India, whose southwestern districts, collectively known as Junglemahal, experienced a spell of Maoist insurgency from 2005–2014. Taking a mixed methods approach, combining surveys across West Bengal and within Junglemahal with ethnographic research, we show that voter assessments of pre-election violence had changed sharply between the 2016 legislative assembly and 2019 parliamentary elections with violence triggering a backlash against the rebel-aligned incumbent party in 2019, but not in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What motivates elite factions to seek to replace an authoritarian incumbent? In this article, I provide a political economy theory of authoritarian replacement. I argue that high wealth inequality fosters authoritarian replacement, but that the effect is conditional on overall wealth being low. At low wealth, elite factions have an incentive to control the state to appropriate income. As wealth grows, elites shift their focus toward securing their wealth and thus prioritize finding credible commitments and stability within authoritarianism. I test these hypotheses using data from 1960 to 2008 and employ multistate survival analysis. A case study of Trujillo's rise in the Dominican Republic illustrates the mechanisms of the theory. The evidence supports the main theoretical expectation that replacement is more likely when the level of wealth is low but wealth inequality is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elections under authoritarian regimes rarely deliver democratic outcomes. Still, most observers and pollsters expected Turkey's May 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections to be different. A deepening economic crisis, a botched rescue effort after a devastating earthquake, and discontent with a ruling party in power for more than two decades seemed to fuel the rise of a united opposition. But the return to democracy did not happen, and this cannot be credited solely to an unlevel electoral playing field. Turkey offers a case study in electoral autocracy, with incumbent tactics of repression and co-optation that disarm opposition parties by drawing them into the logic of autocratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines patterns of voter defection from Turkey's incumbent AKP amid major economic and democratic decline. As in other electoral autocracies, defectors constitute a small but politically significant group in Turkey, where the opposition's ability to secure a transition from authoritarianism depends on reducing the incumbent's vote share. Based on survey data gathered in November 2021 and February 2022, we find that while the high level of partizanship among AKP voters hinders defection, persistent economic and democratic decline still reduces incumbent support. We also found that defections are higher outside of the lowest income group. Our findings have important implications for opposition strategies in electoral autocracies. Directing public debate away from identity issues to economic and democratic problems increases the likelihood of defection. In addition, offering voters clear superior alternatives decreases the cost of uncertainty that comes with change and increases the likelihood of defection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comprehensive understanding of the roles and functions of ASEAN's human rights regime by building on widely documented, consistent findings relating to the purpose of the association and the nature of its human rights institutions. In particular, the paper starts by emphasizing that, despite continuing debate over the nature and achievements/failures of the regional grouping, scholarship tends to converge on the two important aspects: ASEAN's normative framework and its long-standing practice of 'quiet diplomacy' are designed to reassure incumbent governments weary of unwanted interference in internal affairs; and regional human rights institutions are primarily ASEAN bodies. These findings are formulated as assumptions guiding the analysis of the association's human rights rhetoric and practice, which centers on the evolution of intergovernmental consensus, the role of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) in advancing this consensus, and an assessment of ASEAN responses to gross violations perpetrated or supported by governing elites. This latter examination details regional responses to the 2014 military coup in Thailand, Philippines' brutal and largely extrajudicial 'war on drugs', the Rohingya genocide, and the 2021 military coup in Myanmar and ensuing violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the candidate selection process for realistic list positions with regard to multiple-office holding and personal characteristics in flexible-list proportional representation (PR) systems within the Czech context. More specifically, this issue is explored in the 2006–2017 elections to the Czech Chamber of Deputies. Results of binary logistic regression analysis with observations clustered by party or constituency indicate that incumbents (with or without multiple office holding) stand a significantly higher probability of being selected as a realistic candidate. This probability increases only if the incumbent also has the regional mandate. The results also show that candidates with a PhD degree or higher, with a higher public office position, at the age of forty-one to fifty years, or with residence in a regional capital or in Prague have a significant probability of being selected as a realistic candidate. A specific gender bias was also found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What makes some challenger parties succeed and others fail? Existing research on party‐level factors finds that it is essential for parties to close a representational gap. However, this condition cannot be sufficient. For each successful challenger, there are many others proclaiming a similar message but going unheard. Hence, we argue that, instead of only to the messages, more attention should be paid to parties' abilities to communicate their messages effectively. Using an original dataset on 74 challenger parties in five countries in a similar political and economic situation (during the post‐2008 economic crisis), we show that communication is key for electoral success. In particular, we show that challenger parties can win over voters by, on the one hand, harnessing the prominence of a well‐known personality (a locomotive) and by, on the other hand, establishing a means of contacting voters which bypasses the traditional news media and amplifies their message (like a megaphone). But this megaphone only works if it amplifies a message that fills a representational gap (here: an anti‐austerity message) – only then do parties benefit. Furthermore, we provide evidence for the widespread but unproven claim that populism helps challenger parties succeed, but this, too, depends on whether parties are able to contact voters on a large scale. By including three crucial aspects of communication (sender, channel, and message), we can explain a large share of the high variability in challenger party success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A burgeoning literature finds that incumbency effects reflect mostly a personal rather than a partisan advantage. We attribute this to incumbents' mobilization incentives. Incumbents have weaker incentives to exert costly effort on behalf of their copartisans in national races than in local ones, where their local power is at stake. We examine these implications in the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina's largest subnational unit, where midterm elections give mayors a strong incentive to help their copartisans running for the local council, but much weaker ones to support those running for a national seat. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find a large positive effect of incumbency in local mayoral and midterm elections. In contrast, local incumbents neither help nor hurt their copartisans running for the presidency or the national legislature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While economic voting theory assumes that voters respond to economic conditions, critics have argued that most voters lack an adequate understanding of key national economic indicators. In this paper, we investigate the occurrence of a neighbourhood effect, where citizens can observe unemployment levels in their own local communities. Using both official statistics and survey data of three recent election studies in Belgium, we assess whether local unemployment levels are associated with the assessment of the national economy, and incumbent voting. While the results show that the local unemployment level is strongly associated with the assessment of the national economy, results regarding a direct association with supporting incumbent political parties are mixed. We argue that the neighbourhood effect is an important mechanism in economic voting, as citizens react to a neighbourhood effect in their assessment of the state of the national economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When is an incumbent incentivized to experiment with risky reform policy in the presence of future elections? We study a dynamic game between two political parties with heterogeneous preferences and a voter. The voter elects a party that then chooses a policy from a status quo and two risky reform policies. Under infrequent elections, the incumbent party experiments with its preferred reform policy even if its outlook is not promising. In contrast, with overly frequent elections, the incumbent prematurely stops experimentation because an imminent election increases the danger of losing power. While infrequent elections are suboptimal, inefficiency from overly frequent elections is severe enough that voter is worse than under a dictatorship. We also show that the voter's 'incumbent advantage' behavior could lead to an efficient outcome in the frequent elections limit. Our results suggest that leaders engage in risky reform when the surrounding political environment allows them to fail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizens' ability to influence public decisions is the hallmark of democracy, and central to this are candidate selection mechanisms. Despite the increasing popularity of primaries across the globe, scholars disagree on how incumbency status shapes primary election contests. To address this question, I exploit an electoral reform in Argentina that forces parties and coalitions to participate in primaries, but allows these to be contested or uncontested. Employing an original data set on federal legislative nominations between 2011 and 2017, I show that internal divisions encourage contested primaries within the opposition, to which district-level rivals strategically respond in kind by fielding multiple internal lists to counter any potential electoral "bonus" others may enjoy from contesting primaries. Combined with the influence of presidents and governors over selection procedures, these patterns mean that primary races are closely fought within the opposition but are trouble-free under incumbency status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant literature concurs that fiscal transfers affect local democracy when they grant subnational governments nontax revenue. Yet there is nonetheless a mismatch between this concept and existing measures, which consider the whole transfers local governments receive, including both tax and nontax revenue. This article studies the Fondo Común Municipal (FCM), the most important intergovernmental grant in Chile, and provides a novel measure of nontax revenue. It uses this measure alongside the whole FCM transfer to test the rentier hypothesis. On the one hand, it shows that both measures increase the incumbent party vote share, although the effect of our measure is smaller. On the other hand, it finds that the FCM transfer has an impact on the probability of reelection and the competitiveness of elections, but this effect disappears when using our measure. Overall, the findings suggest that rents from transfers do not lead to strong electoral dominance in unitary states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies show that cash transfer programs increase incumbent approval through their financial impact and clear association with the executive. But does this effect hold when it is the legislature rather than the incumbent proposing the program? Amid the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, more than 60 million Brazilians received an emergency assistance payment that was proposed by Congress against resistance from the executive. This study leverages this unique case to examine if cash transfer programs affect presidential approval under circumstances of unclear responsibility. Survey results showed that while approval ratings increased, the public was divided about who was responsible for the program. Moreover, a survey-experiment that informed respondents about the negotiations between the president and Congress found that information improves views about Congress but does not affect presidential approval. The results suggest that even cash transfer programs may promote limited vertical accountability in contexts of unclear policy responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies take increasingly refined views of how socioeconomic conditions influence political behaviour. We add to this literature by exploring how voters' prospective evaluations of long-term economic and social opportunities relate to electoral contestation versus the stabilization of the political-economic system underpinning the knowledge society. Using survey data from eight West European countries, we show that positive prospects are associated with higher support for mainstream parties (incumbents and opposition) and lower support for radical parties on all levels of material well-being. Our results support the idea that 'aspirational voters' with positive evaluations of opportunities (for themselves or their children) represent an important stabilizing force in advanced democratic capitalism. However, we also highlight the importance of radical party support among 'apprehensive voters', who are economically secure but perceive a lack of long-term opportunities. To assess the implications of these findings, we discuss the relative importance of these groups across different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how authoritarian distributive policies may not only generate political support for the autocrat but may also help sustain powerful and lasting authoritarian legacies. We use microlevel data from South Korea's New Village Movement, a 1970s rural development program implemented under dictator Park Chung‐hee and widely touted as contributing to the country's rapid economic development. Our analysis shows that townships in receipt of larger cash transfers cast more votes for Park's incumbent party in the subsequent election. More importantly, we show that the effects of the subsidies still appeared almost four decades later in 2012, when the dictator's daughter was democratically elected as the president of South Korea. We show that these effects were not driven by villagers' long‐term income gains or enhanced social capital due to the program but by the unwavering support of the beneficiary villagers for the dictator, whose legacy remained strong long after democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]