• Electoral systems & reforms

Electoral systems & reforms

Models of political accountability suggest that the governments which perform poorly fail to get re-elected. Recent evidence suggests, however, that voters may punish politicians even for events outside their control. This behaviour may violate standard models of democratic accountability, and has been advanced as evidence of voter irrationality.

This paper uses detailed weather, electoral, and relief data to identify the relationship between government responsiveness to an emergency and electoral decisions. Specifically, the authors look at the decisions that Indian voters made in provincial elections, using the intensity of the monsoon rains as an exogenous shock to welfare. They find that voters, on average, punish incumbent politicians for being in office during weather events beyond their control. However, the degree of voter punishment is reduced somewhat when the government responds more vigorously to the crisis. Key concepts include:

• voters do a better job of holding governments accountable during these emergencies
• voters punish politicians following adverse weather events, but the degree of punishment depends critically on the quality of the ruling party's response: Those distributing greater amounts of relief aid suffer smaller subsequent electoral losses

These results are consistent with models of government accountability, and provide an explanation for Amartya Sen's claim that democratic governments respond better to salient emergencies than to less conspicuous ones. Even so, the results suggest that even the most responsive government will fare worse in the subsequent election than had there been no disaster.

(adapted from the author's summary)

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