Accountability through government alternation: Economic performance and the conditional role of political institutions in fifty countries, 1990–2015

Published date01 June 2019
DOI10.1177/0192512118755842
Date01 June 2019
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118755842
International Political Science Review
2019, Vol. 40(3) 419 –436
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512118755842
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Accountability through government
alternation: Economic performance
and the conditional role of political
institutions in fifty countries, 1990–
2015
Alessandro Pellegata
Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
Mario Quaranta
European University Institute, Italy
Abstract
Government alternation is a fundamental aspect of representative democracies because it is the most efficient
mechanism of accountability through which voters can steer the course of government. Previous research on
alternation has focused either on its conceptualization and measurement or on its role as a determinant of political
and economic outcomes. This article attempts to investigate the factors affecting government alternation. We
test research hypotheses on the direct effect of the economy on alternation and the conditional role played by
political-institutional settings using an original dataset covering 50 countries from 1990 to 2015 and including 304
elections. First, the article provides an overview of the patterns of alternation in the countries we analyse. Second,
it shows that alternation is less likely in times of successful macroeconomic performance, and that the effect of
macroeconomic conditions on alternation is only partially conditional on the political-institutional context.
Keywords
Government alternation, electoral accountability, macroeconomic performance, political institutions,
comparative-longitudinal analysis
Introduction
This article investigates the economic, political and institutional drivers of government alternation
in a comparative and longitudinal perspective. Alternation is an important mechanism of
Corresponding author:
Mario Quaranta, Department of Social and Political Sciences, European University Institute, Via dei Roccettini, 9, San
Domenico di Fiesole 50014, Italy.
Email: mario.quaranta@eui.eu
755842IPS0010.1177/0192512118755842International Political Science ReviewPellegata and Quaranta
research-article2018
Article
420 International Political Science Review 40(3)
accountability in democracies. Incumbents aim at being re-elected, but are not always willing or
able to anticipate changes in public opinion and respond with sound policies. Thus, dissatisfied
voters might steer the course of the government, that is, throw the rascals out.
Although we rely partly on the economic voting literature, the article adopts a different perspec-
tive. The central hypothesis of this literature postulates that when the economy performs poorly,
voters tend to sanction incumbent rulers by voting for the opposition. Thus, most studies focus on
the vote share gained by incumbents in different elections or their popularity among citizens.
However, incumbents’ vote losses do not always coincide with their replacement in government.
Indeed, the configuration of the party system, the strategic behaviour of parties and the mecha-
nisms through which the electoral system translates votes into seats may mean that, even if incum-
bent parties increase their share of the vote, they might lose office or, vice versa, they might remain
in office even after losing votes. For instance, in the 1983, 1987 and 1992 British elections, the
Conservative Party experienced a slight but continuous decrease in the share of the vote.
Nevertheless, given the highly disproportional effect of the first-past-the-post electoral system,
Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990) and John Major (1990–1997) maintained control of the party and
of government. Contrary to this, in the 2001 Italian elections the fragmented and polarised centre-
left coalition (L’Ulivo) lost office, although it increased its share of the vote by a quite impressive
8.2%. These kinds of situation are quite frequent and are also present in the relatively new – and
not yet consolidated – party systems of Eastern European democracies.
These examples indicate that studying the incumbent’s share of the vote is not the same as
studying government alternation. Competitive theories of democracy recognise the fundamental
role played by government alternation in contemporary representative democracies (see, among
others, Przeworski, 2010). However, they tend to conceptualise alternation as a ‘possibility’, argu-
ing that the mere risk of losing office should provide incentives for office-seeking politicians to
make themselves accountable. Empirical studies that instead focus on the occurrence of alternation
are mainly descriptive or interested in investigating the consequences of government alternation on
various aspects of political and economic performance (see Horowitz et al., 2009; Pellegata, 2016;
Zucchini, 2011).
Therefore, resting on the economic voting literature and theories of the role of institutions we test,
first, whether, when macroeconomic performance is poor, government alternation is more likely. We
follow this by testing the conditional effect of political-institutional features on the association
between the economy and alternation. More precisely, we should expect that when electoral systems
are highly disproportional, government responsibility is clear and fewer alternatives in the opposition
are available, then the impact of economic performance on alternation is stronger. However, it is also
plausible that when economic performance is particularly poor, voters, irrespective of the political-
institutional setting, will exert their power of accountability and punish the incumbents.
Our argument is assessed using an original dataset that includes information on election results
and government composition in fifty countries between 1990 and 2015, and that takes into account
304 elections. The analyses confirm the presence of a significant negative relationship between posi-
tive macroeconomic performance and alternation, while they do not detect a substantially significant
mediating effect of institutions. The format of the incumbent majority displays a conditional – though
relatively weak – effect on the association between economic performance and government alterna-
tion, while disproportionality, the number of parties in government and opposition, does not.
On the concept of government alternation
Most competitive theories of democracy, directly or indirectly, encompass the notion of govern-
ment alternation (see Przeworski, 2010: 24–30). In particular, these theories stress the beneficial

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