Electoral incumbency advantages and the introduction of fixed parliamentary terms in the United Kingdom
| Author | Petra Schleiter,Valerie Belu |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117739858 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117739858
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2018, Vol. 20(2) 303 –322
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148117739858
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Electoral incumbency
advantages and the introduction
of fixed parliamentary terms
in the United Kingdom
Petra Schleiter1 and Valerie Belu2
Abstract
Can fixing the parliamentary term be expected to reduce electoral incumbency advantages? The
United Kingdom’s 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act aims to prevent incumbents from scheduling
early elections for political benefit. Yet, the view that flexible election timing gives incumbents an
unfair advantage remains contested. The literature on opportunistic election calling—including the
signalling effects of this strategy and the competence of governments that select it—lends support
to both sides in the debate. This article examines how far the divergent arguments apply in the
United Kingdom. Using observed outcomes and a potential outcomes approach, we investigate
to what effect incumbents have used election timing. Our results suggest that governments can
improve their re-election chances when they have discretion to time elections to favourable
circumstances instead of facing voters at set intervals when conditions may not be advantageous.
Fixed parliamentary terms are likely to reduce that incumbency advantage significantly.
Keywords
fixed-term parliaments, flexible election timing, incumbency advantage, opportunistic elections
Can fixing the parliamentary term be expected to reduce electoral incumbency advan-
tages? In September 2011, the United Kingdom’s Conservative–Liberal Democratic coa-
lition government, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, passed the Fixed-term
Parliaments Act. The Act constrains the prime minister’s discretion to dissolve parliament
with the express aim of curbing the ‘manipulation of election dates for political advan-
tage’ (HM Government, 2011, Introduction). In the debate surrounding this reform, a
central argument is that flexible election timing enables governments to realize an incum-
bency advantage by scheduling elections when conditions are favourable (House of
Commons Library, 2010: 10). Proponents of flexible election timing, however, argue that
1,2Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Corresponding author:
Petra Schleiter, Department of Politics and International Relations and St Hilda’s College, University of
Oxford, Oxford OX1 4DY, UK.
Email: petra.schleiter@politics.ox.ac.uk
739858BPI0010.1177/1369148117739858The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsSchleiter and Belu
research-article2017
Original Article
304 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20(2)
no such advantage accrues to incumbents, so that fixing the parliamentary term simply
restricts the ability of leaders to test their democratic mandate and to consult the people
more frequently than statutory election dates would allow (Edward Leigh MP, HC Deb.
23 October 2014, col. 1070).1
The literature on opportunistic election calling—including the signalling effects of
this strategy and the competence of governments that select it—lends support to both
sides in this policy debate. The political economy literature provides evidence that
incumbents employ their discretion to dissolve parliament by timing elections to favour-
able circumstances, such as a strong economy or opposition disarray, to maximize their
support (Chowdhury, 1993; Ito and Park, 1988; Kayser, 2006). Recent studies suggest
that this strategy yields significant incumbency advantages in elections (Roy and
Alcantara, 2012; Schleiter and Tavits, 2016). Others, however, doubt that governments
derive electoral benefits from their ability to time elections strategically. One argument
is that strategic election timing confers no electoral advantages because of its signalling
effects (Smith, 2004). According to this view, snap elections betray a government’s lack
of confidence in its ability to maintain high levels of popularity until the next regular
election date. This signals that the incumbent is less competent than a government that
confidently carries on until the next regular election, which turns voters against the
incumbent (Smith, 2004). The alternative argument concedes that opportunistically
scheduled elections may correlate with superior incumbent performance in elections, but
attributes any such correlation to a selection effect: only successful governments make
use of the opportunity to call a premature poll for partisan benefit, and hence the under-
lying competence of these governments, rather than the opportunity to time elections,
accounts for their electoral performance (Leuprecht and McHugh, 2008: 428). The
debate revolves around three questions: (1) do the conditions under which governments
call elections opportunistically signal reduced incumbent competence to voters, (2) how
do incumbents perform in elections that are scheduled for partisan benefit and (3) can
incumbency advantages in opportunistic elections be attributed solely to a selection
effect, which arises because competent governments are more likely to make use of
opportunistic election timing?
To those engaged in the UK debate about fixed parliamentary terms, these questions
are of material importance. While the House of Commons defeated a motion in October
2014 to bring forward a proposal to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the legislation
remains controversial, and Section 7 of the Act itself requires a review in 2020. The
debate will therefore continue, and so will the need for a UK-specific evidentiary basis for
the political discussions. In this article, we examine the relevance of the perspectives
outlined above to the particular case of the United Kingdom to better understand the
likely effect of the fixed parliamentary term on future election outcomes.2 Throughout,
we rely on multiple tests and data: qualitative evidence, statistical analyses of observed
UK election results and an examination of potential outcomes using polling data together
with a case study.
Our findings suggest that UK prime ministers made extensive use of their powers to
time elections to favourable circumstances. Nearly 60% of the United Kingdom’s post-
war elections up to 2015 were opportunistically timed, typically in circumstances that did
not take voters by surprise. Incumbents who used this strategy realized vote and seat
shares that outstripped those of their peers in other elections by 3.5% and 11%, respec-
tively, on average. These differences in electoral performance cannot be explained as the
result of a selection effect alone: opinion polling data suggest that incumbents who called
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