Abstract
Studies of economic voting have demonstrated that the relationship between citizens’ satisfaction with the economy and their support for government parties is conditional on the so-called ‘institutional clarity of responsibility’ of a country. So far, scholars have predominantly focused on power diffusion within a single level of government to study the role of (horizontal) institutional clarity. Yet, countries also differ substantially in the extent to which power is diffused between government levels. In this article, we argue that this vertical dimension of power diffusion can be expected to be an equally strong moderator of accountability mechanisms. Our findings show that performance-based support for governing parties is conditioned by both the horizontal and vertical diffusion of government power within a country and that the moderating influence of power diffusion on electoral accountability varies per policy area.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 864–877 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Acta Politica |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 22 Jan 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgements We would like to thank Catherine de Vries, Mark Franklin, Tom van der Meer, and Guy Whitten for their help and feedback. Presentations at the Quality of Governance Institute in Gothenburg (GU), Elections, Public Opinion and Parties (EPOP) Conference in London, the ECPR General Conference in Oslo, and the Politicologenetmaal in Leiden generated many helpful comments. Moreover, we are grateful for the useful feedback we received from the two anonymous reviewers. We would also like to acknowledge generous funding from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through the NWO TOP Grant (407-13-029).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, Springer Nature Limited.
Keywords
- Clarity of responsibility
- Democratic accountability
- Economic voting
- Multilevel governance