Accountability and Information in Elections

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ashworth, Scott; de Mesquita, Ethan Bueno; Friedenberg, Amanda
• 署名单位: University of Chicago; University of Chicago; Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20150349
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 95-138
• 关键词: Electoral accountability; policy choices; term limits; politicians; GOVERNMENT; REPRESENTATION; institutions; performance; bureaucrats; incentives

摘要

Elections are thought to improve voter welfare through two channels: effective accountability (i.e., providing incentives for politicians to take costly effort) and electoral selection (i.e., retaining politicians with characteristics voters value). We show that there may be a trade-off between these two channels. Higher levels of effective accountability may hinder the voters' ability to learn about the politicians. In turn, this may hinder electoral selection and be detrimental to voter welfare. This is because increasing effective accountability directly impacts how informative governance outcomes are about an incumbent's type. We show that, if politicians' effort and type are local substitutes (resp. complements) in the production of governance outcomes, an increase in effective accountability corresponds to a decrease (resp. increase) in Blackwell (1951) informativeness. We also show that effective accountability can vary even absent institutional variation. In particular, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for there to be multiple equilibria that differ in terms of both effective accountability and electoral selection. Overall, our findings have implications for voter behavior, the efficacy of institutional reforms, and voter welfare.