A vast literature suggests that voters in new democracies ‘sell’ their vote to patrons providing private or small-scale club goods, or, alternatively, that such goods are distributed along ethnic lines to reinforce ethnic voting. In either case the outcome is undermining democratic accountability. This study finds that citizens in one new democracy – Ghana – expect (and get) the patronage but at the same time engage in economic voting. Eighty-five percent of citizens first and foremost expect their legislators to supply private or small-scale ‘club’ goods. This acts as a strong incentive for politicians to actually supply such goods, which is confirmed by participants’ observational data and more than 250 interviews conducted by the author. Despite this, citizens do not vote based on how well or how poorly incumbent MPs provide clientelistic goods. A multivariate analysis reveals that voting for the opposition or the incumbent is determined by evaluations of the state of the national economy and of the government’s policies. What the literature has portrayed as an ‘either-or’ is ‘both’, and this is perfectly rational: Extract as much as one can in terms of private and small club goods but vote based on economic factors. The literature suggests that clientelism dominates elections in newer democracies and thus undermines democracy. The findings from this study suggest that while distribution of clientelistic goods is common, this does not necessarily undermine the mechanism of democratic accountability in elections.

Segnalazione bibliografica. American Journal of Political Science (April 2011), Vol. 55, N. 2, pp. 383-397 Autori: John M. Carey, Simon Hix Abstract: Can electoral rules be designed to achieve political ideals such as accurate representation of voter preferences and accountable governments? The academic literature commonly divides electoral systems into two types, majoritarian and proportional, and implies a straightforward trade-off by which having more of an ideal that a majoritarian system provides means giving up an equal measure of what proportional representation (PR) delivers. We posit that these trade-offs are better characterized as nonlinear and that one can gain most of the advantages attributed to PR,...

Segnalazione bibliografica. European Journal of Political Research (May 2011), 50: 365–394 Autori: Mark Andreas Kayser, Christopher Wlezien Abstract Numerous studies have demonstrated a weakening identification of voters with political parties in Western Europe over the last three decades. It is argued here that the growing proportion of voters with weak or no party affinities has strong implications for economic voting. When the proportion of voters with partisan affinities is low, the effect of economic performance on election outcomes is strong; when partisans proliferate, economic conditions matter less. Employing Eurobarometer data for eight European countries from 1976 to 1992, this inverse association between partisanship and...

Segnalazione bibliografica. Autori: Kathleen Bawn e Zeynep Somer-Topcu American Journal of Political Science, Volume 56, Number 2, 1 April 2012 , pp. 433-446(14) Abstract We argue that governing status affects how voters react to extreme versus moderate policy positions. Being in government forces parties to compromise and to accept ideologically unappealing choices as the best among available alternatives. Steady exposure to government parties in this role and frequent policy compromise by governing parties lead voters to discount the positions of parties when they are in government. Hence, government parties do better in elections when they offset this discounting by taking relatively extreme positions. The...