Lame ducks and divided government: How voters control the unaccountable
- Schelker, Mark University of Fribourg
-
2018
Published in:
- Journal of Comparative Economics. - 2018, vol. 46, no. 1, p. 131-144
English
Electoral institutions interact through the incentives they provide to policy makers and voters. In this paper divided government is interpreted as the reaction of voters to a sys- tematic control problem. Voters realize that term-limited executives (“lame ducks”) cannot credibly commit to a moderate electoral platform due to missing reelection incentives. By dividing government control voters force a lame duck to compromise on policies with an opposing legislature. Based on data from the US states, I present evidence showing that the probability of divided government is about 8 to 10 percent higher when governors are lame ducks.
- Faculty
- Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
- Department
- Département d'économie politique
- Language
-
- English
- Classification
- Politics
- License
- License undefined
- Identifiers
-
- RERO DOC 328804
- DOI 10.1016/j.jce.2017.02.005
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/308548
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