Good riddance to bad government? Institutional performance voting in Swedish municipalities. (27th March 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Broms, Rasmus
• Is Part Of: Journal of public policy. Volume 42:Number 1(2022)
• Page Start: 110
• Page End: 135
• Publication Date: 2022-03-27
• Subjects: auditing -- institutional quality -- retrospective voting -- Sweden; Policy sciences -- Periodicals; 351.007205
• DOI: 10.1017/S0143814X21000076
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0143-814X

Abstract

Abstract: Electoral accountability is widely considered to be an essential component for maintaining the quality of a polity's institutions. Nevertheless, a growing body of research has found weak or limited support for the notion that voters punish political corruption, a central but partial aspect of institutional quality. In order to capture the full range of institutional dysfunction an electorate should be incentivised to punish, I further the concept of institutional performance voting, that is, voting on institutional quality as a whole. Using a novel data set on performance audit reports in Swedish municipalities between 2003 and 2014, I find that audit critique is associated with a statistically significant but substantively moderate electoral loss of about a percentage point for mayoral parties, while simultaneously associated with a 14 percentage point decrease in their probability of reelection.