Entrenched Incumbents, Irresponsible Parties? Comparative Analysis ofIncumbency Advantage Across Different Electoral Systems.

Comparative Politics;Incumbency Advantage;Electoral Systems;Developed Democracies;Comparative Electoral Politics;Personal Votes;Political Science;Social Sciences;Political Science

Ariga, KenichiMebane Jr, Walter R. ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Comparative Politics;    Incumbency Advantage;    Electoral Systems;    Developed Democracies;    Comparative Electoral Politics;    Personal Votes;    Political Science;    Social Sciences;    Political Science;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/77907/kariga_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation presents a comparative analysis of incumbency advantage across developed democracies.In particular, it examines two variants of incumbency advantage: 1) the extra electoral benefits that political parties gain from fielding incumbent candidates (incumbency advantage for political parties) and 2) the electoral advantage that individual incumbents enjoy over non-incumbent candidates of the same party (incumbency advantage for individual candidates).For each type of incumbency advantage, this dissertation offers three distinctive contributions.First, it provides comparable estimates of both types of incumbency advantage across different electoral systems.The existing literature lacks appropriate estimates of either type of incumbency advantage that are comparable across different electoral systems.This dissertation furnishes fully comparable estimates — the first of its kind — and makes it possible to conduct a systematic comparative analysis of incumbency advantage.Second, it develops a theory of electoral systems;; impact on the magnitude of incumbency advantage.This theory is partly based on the theory of personal-vote incentives, since the personal vote is one of the critical sources of incumbency advantage.However, the theory developed in this dissertation highlights an important departure from the personal-vote theory, because the personal-vote incentives do not always translate into actual electoral gains from personal-vote building activities.This new theory of comparative incumbency advantage advances our knowledge of the consequences of electoral systems and illuminates the important distinction between the personal-vote incentives and the actual electoral gains.Third, it provides an elaborate multiple-country empirical analysis, based on the newly compiled dataset of district- and candidate-level election results in ten developed democracies (Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom).This empirical analysis constitutes by far the most extensive cross-national analysis of incumbency advantage based on the detailed aggregate election data.The dissertation also presents a few significant implications for the relationship between electoral systems and accountability.In particular, the clear distinction made between incumbency advantage for political parties and incumbency advantage for individual candidates makes it possible to derive specific implications for the collective accountability of parties and the individual accountability of legislators, respectively.