Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:29:12.036Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Incumbency Curse: Weak Parties, Term Limits, and Unfulfilled Accountability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

MARKO KLAŠNJA  and
ROCÍO TITIUNIK
MARKO KLAŠNJA*
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
ROCÍO TITIUNIK*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
*
Marko Klašnja is Assistant Professor, Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service and Department of Government, ICC 593, 3700 O St NW, Washington, DC 20057 (marko.klasnja@georgetown.edu); Web: http://markoklasnja.com.
Rocío Titiunik is James Orin Murfin Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, 505 South State St., 5700 Haven Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (titiunik@umich.edu); Web: http://www.umich.edu/~titiunik.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We study how representation works in a context where accountability to voters is restricted because of term limits and accountability to parties is limited because of party weakness. Analyzing all Brazilian mayoral elections between 1996 and 2012 using a regression discontinuity design, we show that becoming the incumbent party results in large subsequent electoral losses. We theorize that the presence of term limits, combined with political parties to which politicians are only weakly attached, affects the incentives and behavior of individual politicians in such a way that their parties’ suffer systematic losses. A descriptive analysis of an original dataset on the career paths of Brazilian mayors suggests that our assumptions are an accurate description of Brazil’s political context, and we find support for three central empirical implications of our theoretical explanation. Moreover, based on an analysis of additional data from Mexico, Peru, Chile, Costa Rica, and Colombia, we show that the negative effects found in Brazil also exist in other democracies.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 111 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 129 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This article is a major revision of—and replaces—the previous article “Incumbency Advantage in Brazil: Evidence from Municipal Mayoral Elections” (first draft: March 30, 2009). We thank our editor, John Ishiyama, and four anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. We also thank Dan Bernhardt, Matías Cattaneo, Torun Dewan, Anna Grzymala-Busse, Simon Hix, James Hollyer, Rafael Hortala-Vallve, Gary King, Rene Lindstädt, Noam Lupu, Natalija Novta, John Patty, David Samuels; seminar participants at the London School of Economics, the University of Maryland, the University of Warwick, Washington University in St. Louis; and conference participants at the 2013 American Political Science Association annual meeting for valuable comments and discussions on recent versions of the article. We thank Henry Brady, Matías Cattaneo, Don Green, Jas Sekhon, Eric Schickler, Jonathan Wand; seminar participants at the University of Michigan, Universidad de San Andrés; and conference participants at the 2009 Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting for valuable comments and discussions on the previous article. We are grateful to Juan Camilo Castillo, Humberto Dantas, Daniel Mejía, Mónica Pachón, Pascual Restrepo, Fabio Sánchez, and Gabriel Tarriba for sharing data and sources. We thank Nicolás Idrobo for outstanding research assistance. R. Titiunik gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Institute for Business and Economic Research at U.C. Berkeley and the National Science Foundation (SES 1357561).

References

REFERENCES

Abrucio, F. L. 1998. Os barões da federação: os governadores e a redemocratização brasileira. São Paulo: Editora Hucitec.Google Scholar
Alt, James, de Mesquita, Ethan Bueno, and Rose, Shanna. 2011. “Disentangling Accountability and Competence in Elections: Evidence from US Term Limits.” Journal of Politics 73 (1): 171–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ames, Barry. 2001a. The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ames, Barry. 2001b. Party Discipline in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies. In Legislative Politics in Latin America, eds. Morgenstern, Scott and Nacif, Benito. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Benton, Allyson Lucinda. 2005. “Dissatisfied Democrats or Retrospective Voters? Economic Hardship, Political Institutions, and Voting Behavior in Latin America.” Comparative Political Studies 38 (4): 417–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besley, Timothy. 2007. Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besley, Timothy, and Case, Anne. 1995. “Does Electoral Accountability Affect Economic Policy Choices? Evidence from Gubernatorial Term Limits.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 110 (3): 769–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calonico, Sebastian, Cattaneo, Matias D., Farrell, Max H., and Titiunik, Rocío. 2016. “Regression Discontinuity Designs Using Covariates.” Working paper, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Calonico, Sebastian, Cattaneo, Matias D., and Titiunik, Rocío. 2014 a. “Robust Data-Driven Inference in the Regression-Discontinuity Design.” Stata Journal 14 (4): 909–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calonico, Sebastian, Cattaneo, Matias D., and Titiunik, Rocío. 2014 b. “Robust Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for Regression-Discontinuity Designs.” Econometrica 82 (6): 2295–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calonico, Sebastian, Cattaneo, Matias D., and Titiunik, Rocío. 2015 a. “Optimal Data-Driven Regression Discontinuity Plots.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 110 (512): 1753–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calonico, Sebastian, Cattaneo, Matias D., and Titiunik, Rocío. 2015 b. “ rdrobust: An R Package for Robust Nonparametric Inference in Regression-Discontinuity Designs.” R Journal 7 (1): 38–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calvo, Ernesto, and Murillo, María Victoria. 2014. “Responsiveness and Responsibility.” Book manuscript.Google Scholar
Caselli, Francesco, and Morelli, Massimo. 2004. “Bad Politicians.” Journal of Public Economics 88 (3–4): 759–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castillo, Juan Camilo, Mejía, Daniel, and Restrepo, Pascual. 2014. “Scarcity without Leviathan: The Violent Effects of Cocaine Supply Shortages in the Mexican Drug War.” Available at SSRN 2409268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cattaneo, Matias D., Frandsen, Brigham, and Titiunik, Rocío. 2015. “Randomization Inference in the Regression Discontinuity Design: An Application to Party Advantages in the U.S. Senate.” Journal of Causal Inference 3 (1): 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cattaneo, Matias D., and Escanciano, Juan C.. Forthcoming. “Regression Discontinuity Designs: Theory and Applications.” (Advances in Econometrics, volume 38). Emerald Group Publishing.Google Scholar
Cattaneo, Matias D., Jansson, Michael, and Ma, Xinwei. 2015. “Simple Local Regression Distribution Estimators with an Application to Manipulation Testing.” Working paper, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Cattaneo, Matias D., Titiunik, Rocio, and Vazquez-Bare, Gonzalo. Forthcoming. “Comparing Inference Approaches for RD Designs: A Reexamination of the Effect of Head Start on Child Mortality.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.Google Scholar
Desposato, Scott W. 2006. “Parties for Rent? Ambition, Ideology, and Party Switching in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (1): 62–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Domínguez, Jorge I., and McCann, James A. 1995. “Shaping Mexico’s Electoral Arena: The Construction of Partisan Cleavages in the 1988 and 1991 National Elections.” American Political Science Review 89 (1): 34–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erikson, Robert, and Titiunik, Rocío. 2015. “Using Regression Discontinuity to Uncover the Personal Incumbency Advantage.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 10 (1): 101–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraz, Claudio, and Finan, Frederico. 2011. “Electoral Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from the Audits of Local Governments.” American Economic Review 101: 1274–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowler, Anthony, and Hall, Andrew B.. 2014. “Disentangling the Personal and Partisan Incumbency Advantages: Evidence from Close Elections and Term Limits.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 9 (4): 501–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagopian, Frances, Gervasoni, Carlos, and Moraes, Juan Andres. 2009. “From Patronage to Program: The Emergence of Party-Oriented Legislators in Brazil.” Comparative Political Studies 42 (3): 360–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, Wendy. 2010. The Transformation of the Workers’ Party in Brazil, 1989–2009. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
IBGE. 2002. Pesquisa de Informações Básicas Municipais, Gestão Pública 2002. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica.Google Scholar
Kitschelt, Herbert, Hawkins, Kirk A., Luna, Juan Pablo, Rosas, Guillermo, and Zechmeister, Elizabeth J.. 2010. Latin American Party Systems. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klašnja, Marko. 2015. “Corruption and Incumbency Disadvantage: Theory and Evidence.” Journal of Politics 77 (4): 928–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klašnja, Marko, Little, Andrew T., and Tucker, Joshua A.. Forthcoming. “Political Corruption Traps.” Political Science Research and Methods.Google Scholar
Lindstädt, René, and Wielen, Ryan J. Vander. 2011. “Timely Shirking: Time-Dependent Monitoring and its Effects on Legislative Behavior in the U.S. Senate.” Public Choice 148 (1–2): 119–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupu, Noam. 2016. Party Brands in Crisis: Partisanship, Brand Dilution, and the Breakdown of Political Parties in Latin America. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mainwaring, Scott. 1993. “Brazilian Party Underdevelopment in Comparative Perspective.” Political Science Quarterly 107 (4): 677–707.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mainwaring, Scott. 1995. Brazil: Weak Parties, Feckless Democracy. In Building Democratic Institutions: Parties and Party Systems in LatinAmerica, eds. Mainwaring, Scott and Scully, Timothy R.. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mainwaring, Scott. 1999. Rethinking Party systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mainwaring, Scott, and Scully, Timothy R.. 1995. Building Democratic Institutions: Parties and Party Systems in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Manin, Bernard, Przeworski, Adam, and Stokes, Susan C.. 1999. Elections and Representation. In Democracy, Accountability, and Representation, eds. Przeworski, Adam, Stokes, Susan C., and Manin, Bernard. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mansbridge, Jane. 2009. “A Selection Model of Representation.” Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (4): 369–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCrary, Justin. 2008. “Manipulation of the Running Variable in the Regression Discontinuity Design: A Density Test.” Journal of Econometrics 142 (2): 698–714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreno, Erika, Crisp, Brian, and Shugart, Mattew S.. 2003. The Accountability Deficit in Latin America. In Democratic Accountability in Latin America, eds. Mainwaring, Scott and Welna, Christopher. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nickson, R. Andrew. 1995. Local Government in Latin America. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pachón, Mónica, and Sánchez, Fabio. 2014. Base de Datos Sobre Resultados Electorales CEDE, 1958–2011. DOCUMENTOS CEDE 012058, Universidad de Los Andes—CEDE. https://ideas.repec.org/p/col/000089/012058.html Google Scholar
Persson, Torsten, and Tabellini, Guido. 1999. “The Size and Scope of Government: Comparative Politics with Rational Politicians.” European Economic Review 43 (4): 699–735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Kenneth M. 2012. Parties, Party Systems and Political Representation. In Routledge Handbook of Latin American politics, eds. Kingstone, Peter R. and Yashar, Deborah J.. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Samuels, David J. 2003. Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuels, David J., and Shugart, Matthew S.. 2003. “Presidentialism, Elections and Representation.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 15 (1): 33–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuels, David J., and Shugart, Matthew S.. 2010. Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuels, David, and Zucco, Cesar. 2014. “The Power of Partisanship in Brazil: Evidence from Survey Experiments.” American Journal of Political Science 58 (1): 212–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svolik, Milan. 2013. “Learning to Love Democracy: Electoral Accountability, Government Performance, and the Consolidation of Democracy.” American Journal of Political Science 57 (3): 685–702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, Joshua. 2006. Regional Economic Voting: Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, 1990–1999. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uppal, Yogesh. 2009. “The Disadvantaged Incumbents: Estimating Incumbency Effects in Indian State Legislatures.” Public Choice 138 (1-2): 9–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weyland, Kurt. 2003. “Economic Voting Reconsidered: Crisis and Charisma in the Election of Hugo Chávez.” Comparative Political Studies 36 (7): 822–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zamboni, Yves, and Litschig, Stephan. 2014. “Audit Risk and Rent Extraction: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Brazil.” Working paper.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Klašnja and Titiunik supplementary material

Online Appendix 1

Download Klašnja and Titiunik supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 620.4 KB
Supplementary material: PDF

Klašnja and Titiunik supplementary material

Online Appendix 2

Download Klašnja and Titiunik supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 171.7 KB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.