Electoral accountability and political competence
| Author | Lindsey Gailmard |
| DOI | 10.1177/09516298221081809 |
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Electoral accountability and
political competence
Lindsey Gailmard
Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of
Technology
Abstract
Much research contends that candidate competence brings technical or political skill, such that
selecting against such attributes seems irrational. However, if special interest coalitions are suffi-
ciently strong, a majority may expect that political expertise will be used to select policies that
generate rents for narrow constituencies at the expense of its own welfare. I develop a model
in which a majority prefers to elect the less competent politician in order to undermine the
incumbent’s ability to pursue the special interest agenda and derive the implications for account-
ability in this setting. The results demonstrate that the majority’s attempts to reassert control over
policy through its retention decisions impede social welfare maximizing reform and distort aggre-
gate welfare by either encouraging (i) inefficient policy selection or (ii) inefficient candidate selec-
tion. Even if politicians choose policies that maximize social welfare doing so may only worsen
aggregate welfare by providing voters with more information about candidate competence,
which enables the majority to better select inept politicians.
Keywords
Accountability, competence, special interest influence
Conventional wisdom suggests—and much political economy research assumes—that
voters prefer competent politicians that are better able to effectively execute policy.
But what if a majority is aware that politicians will not use their political competence
to pursue policies the majority prefers? For instance, politicians, once in office, may
be responsive to special interest constituencies that prefer policies that impose a cost
Corresponding author:
Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology.
Email: gailmard@caltech.edu
Article
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2022, Vol. 34(2) 236–261
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/ 09516298221081809
journals.sagepub.com/home/jtp
to the majority. In this case, effective implementation of the special interest agenda may
only worsen majority welfare.
This paper formalizes the intuition that politicians have incentives to pursue the inter-
ests of passionate minorities (Downs 1957) and derives the implications for accountabil-
ity when this incentive is commonly known by the electorate. As political competence
improves a politician’s ability to target policy reforms, the majority prefers less compe-
tent politicians that are less able to target policy benefits to narrow constituencies. In this
setting, a crisis of political competence does not indicate voter irrationality or incompe-
tence, rather it indicates that the majority recognizes its own limited control over the
future actions of politicians. By electing incompetent politicians the majority reasserts
some control over future policy by subverting a politician’s ability to serve special inter-
est constituencies.
The results are premised on two key substantive assumptions: (i) preference intensity
matters for political outcomes (e.g., Downs 1957); and (ii) average voters know politi-
cians have an incentive to pursue special interest policy reforms. This generates intuition
as to how a majority of the electorate could correctly perceive that a particular candidate
is less competent and yet prefer the incompetent candidate to a more competent alterna-
tive. That is, the majority both knowingly and deliberately elects a less competent
politician.
I derive the social welfare implications of the majority’s attempts to influence policy
through its strategic retention behavior in an environment in which the special interest
policy agenda maximizes social welfare. The results suggest that the majority undermines
social welfare maximizing reform by either inducing politicians to pursue the majority’s
interests—which worsens current policy—or by selecting less capable candidates to
govern—which worsens future policy.
Even if social welfare considerations should prompt politicians to pursue special inter-
est reforms, politicians may pursue the majority agenda in order to gain reelection. The
extent to which the majority coalition’s support affects a politician’s reelection prospects
depends on the relative size of the majority and special interest coalitions, as well as the
extent of information asymmetries between majority and special interest voters. If the
special interest constituency is small or the majority is well-informed, politicians will
distort policy towards the interests of the majority as majority support is critical for
reelection. Instead, if the special interest constituency is relatively large or the majority
is ill-informed, politicians will pursue the special interest agenda.
The extent to which the majority coalition is able to induce politicians to pursue their
interests in the first period affects the information available to both the majority and the
special interest coalition prior to voting. If competent politicians sometimes pursue the
majority’s preferred policy to win reelection, first period policy outcomes will be unin-
formative of candidate ability, whereas if both types of politicians pursue the special
interest agenda, policy outcomes will better reflect candidate skill. Additional information
about candidate ability introduces competing effects: more information enables special
interest voters to more effectively select competent candidates, but also enables majority
voters to better select less competent ones.
To develop this argument, I construct a two-period accountability model that explicitly
incorporates policy conflict between majority and special interest constituencies. The
Gailmard 237
To continue reading
Request your trial