The Electoral Consequences of Government Accountability: Evidence from the United Kingdom

Abstract

Are governments accountable to the issue preferences of voters? Studies of policy accountability have linked parties’ policy performance to voters’ support. For example, scholars argue that voters use the economy as a measure of governments’ policy success. However, we know very little about the extent to which government policy accountability varies depending on the policy area considered. Following policy accountability and economic voting theories, we argue that voters sanction governing parties for failing to deliver policies emphasized during the election campaigns. Using data on the distribution of attention across issues in parties’ election manifestos and UK Acts of Parliament, we expect that issue accountability matters since voters detect when parties’ electoral promises diverge from their policy outputs. We link this data with survey responses from the British Election Study between 1983 and 2010. On the individual level, when policy outputs and electoral promises do not correspond, voters respond by viewing the party not only as less accountable but also in policy accountability decrease the electoral support that governing parties receive. The results hold important implications for understanding democratic accountability and reveal that citizens consider different policy areas (and not only the economy) as important to evaluate government’s performances.

Keywords: voting; accountability; parties; public policy