Does Federalism Prevent Democratic Accountability? Assigning Responsibility for Rates of COVID-19 Testing
| Author | John Kennedy,Christopher Alcantara,Anthony Sayers |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/14789299211001690 |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Early Results |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211001690
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(1) 158 –165
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299211001690
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Does Federalism Prevent
Democratic Accountability?
Assigning Responsibility for
Rates of COVID-19 Testing
John Kennedy1, Anthony Sayers2
and Christopher Alcantara1
Abstract
Does federalism prevent citizens from holding governments accountable for their actions?
The pandemic represents the ideal scenario for testing the effects of federalism on democratic
accountability because citizens are highly motivated to hold governments accountable for
preventing or failing to prevent the rapid transmission of the virus. Previous research suggests
that a number of institutional and political factors complicate the accountability function in federal
systems. We add to this literature by assessing the effect of one political factor, exclusivity
(measured in terms of policy variation at one level), on accountability. The coronavirus pandemic
provides a unique opportunity to assess this factor given the high levels of issue saliency, media
attention, and low levels of intergovernmental and interparty conflict it has generated. Drawing on
original data from the May 2020 Democratic Checkup Survey and public data from the Canadian
National Microbiology Laboratory, our preliminary findings suggest that interprovincial policy
variation with respect to coronavirus testing is not correlated with public assessments of the
adequacy of provincial testing, and so it seems that Canadians are not able to assign responsibility
to the correct level of government despite ideal conditions for doing so.
Keywords
federalism, responsibility, blame and credit, political conditions, coronavirus pandemic
Accepted: 19 February 2021
Introduction
Clarity of responsibility is critical to democratic accountability (Anderson, 2000; Powell
and Whitten, 1993; Whitten and Palmer, 1999). Citizens vote for the incumbent party
when times are good and against it when times are bad (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2000:
1University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada
2University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
Corresponding author:
Christopher Alcantara, University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada.
Email: calcanta@uwo.ca
1001690PSW0010.1177/14789299211001690Political Studies ReviewKennedy et al.
research-article2021
Early Results
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