Noisy Retrospection: The Effect of Party Control on Policy Outcomes

Retrospective voting is vital for democracy. But, are the objective performance metrics widely thought to be relevant for retrospection—such as the performance of the economy, criminal justice system, and schools, to name a few—valid criteria for evaluating government performance? That is, do politi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American political science review 2020-02, Vol.114 (1), p.237-257
Main Authors: M. DYNES, ADAM, HOLBEIN, JOHN B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Animal attacks
Business metrics
Coalition governments
Coalitions
Crime
Criminal justice
Criminal justice system
Criteria
Debates
Democracy
Discontinuity
Election results
Elections
Evidence
Government (Administrative Body)
Health status
Meetings
Policy Analysis
Political parties
Political power
Political science
Politicians
Power
Public officials
Research Design
Schools
State elections
States
Voters
Voting
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Summary:Retrospective voting is vital for democracy. But, are the objective performance metrics widely thought to be relevant for retrospection—such as the performance of the economy, criminal justice system, and schools, to name a few—valid criteria for evaluating government performance? That is, do political coalitions actually have the power to influence the performance metrics used for retrospection on the timeline introduced by elections? Using difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity techniques, we find that US states governed by Democrats and those by Republicans perform equally well on economic, education, crime, family, social, environmental, and health outcomes on the timeline introduced by elections (2–4 years downstream). Our results suggest that voters may struggle to truly hold government coalitions accountable, as objective performance metrics appear to be largely out of the immediate control of political coalitions.
ISSN:0003-0554
1537-5943
DOI:10.1017/S0003055419000649