Journal article

Lame ducks and divided government: How voters control the unaccountable

    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
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/308548
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