How do different sources of partisanship influence government accountability in Europe?
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Author | Paul Whiteley,Ann-Kristin Kölln |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512118780445 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118780445
International Political Science Review
2019, Vol. 40(4) 502 –517
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512118780445
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How do different sources of
partisanship influence government
accountability in Europe?
Paul Whiteley
University of Essex, UK
Ann-Kristin Kölln
Aarhus University, Denmark
Abstract
The possibility of holding representatives to account through regular elections is one of the cornerstones of
representative democracy. The precise role of partisanship in doing this has not been extensively examined.
Using survey data from Europe (2002–2012), we show that partisanship can weaken or strengthen
accountability, depending on its sources. If it is an affective-psychological attitude, as the Michigan school
suggests, then it weakens accountability because it acts as a perceptual screen. If, however, it is a calculation
of party performance which is constantly updated by citizens, then it strengthens accountability. The findings
suggest that partisanship in Europe has been quite responsive to performance over the ten-year period.
Instead of acting as a screen that inhibits accountability, partisanship appears rooted in calculations of party
performance and so enhances accountability. However, the effects are asymmetric with left-leaning partisans
more sensitive to the performance of their governments than right-leaning partisans.
Keywords
Democratic accountability, European Social Survey, government performance, partisanship, pooled cross-
section time-series analysis, simultaneous equation estimation
Introduction
One of the most important features of democratic rule is the possibility of holding politicians to
account for their decisions. Accountability in this context relates to the connection between perfor-
mance and its consequences (Manin et al., 1999a; Romzek, 2015). The role of partisanship in this
process has not been extensively examined, and so in this article we contribute to the discussion of
Corresponding author:
Paul Whiteley, Department of Government, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK.
Email: whiteley@essex.ac.uk
780445IPS0010.1177/0192512118780445International Political Science ReviewWhiteley and Kölln
research-article2018
Article
Whiteley and Kölln 503
accountability and partisanship with a single claim: the extent to which citizens hold governments
accountable depends on the source of their partisanship.
Over the last several decades, the concept of partisanship has been employed in many studies
and it is one of the dominant drivers of voter choice. While the literature largely agrees on these
effects, it is more divided when it comes to understanding the sources of partisanship. When the
concept was introduced originally, it was defined as the product of socialization processes and
affective reasoning among citizens (e.g. Campbell et al., 1960). In contrast, later studies have
argued that partisanship is the result of cumulative evaluations of party performance (e.g. Fiorina,
1981). We suggest that this difference in the sources of partisanship matters with regard to its
effects on political accountability.
Numerous studies of the accountability mechanism have investigated how the performance of
politicians in managing the economy influences citizens’ voting behaviour (for an overview, see
Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2013). It shows clearly that voters reward incumbents for good eco-
nomic performance and punish them for bad outcomes (Key, 1961). According to the socialization
interpretation of partisanship, or what we will call type-1 partisanship, party identification is exog-
enous to voting behaviour since it is an ‘unmoving mover’ of the immediate factors which deter-
mine electoral choice. Type-1 partisanship should therefore weaken political accountability
because stable, long-term attachments to parties can override public evaluations of their perfor-
mance (see e.g. Kayser and Wlezien, 2011; Tilley and Hobolt, 2011). In contrast, partisanship
grounded in policy evaluations, or what we call type-2 partisanship, is based on cost–benefit cal-
culations of the perceived effectiveness of parties in delivering public policies (Fiorina, 1981;
Franklin, 1992). This is often referred to as the ‘running tally’ model of partisanship. Type-2 parti-
sanship should enhance accountability because it is responsive to other factors which drive voting
behaviour, in particular policy performance and leadership evaluations. It makes partisanship an
effective mechanism of political accountability.
The academic debate on the rival accounts of partisanship is widespread and on-going, and it
has produced many studies on either side of the argument. We do not aim to settle this debate here.
Existing research shows that the electorate is made up of a mixture of both types of partisans (see
Kramer, 1971, 1983; Wlezien et al., 1997). The rich literatures on both types are our point of depar-
ture for arguing that both have their theoretical and empirical merits, and that they should be incor-
porated into a joint analysis to further shed light on how Europeans hold their governments
accountable. Doing that requires a conceptualisation of political accountability as partisan respon-
siveness to government performance.
This article is believed to be the first to study sources of partisanship comparatively and to use
such a conceptualisation of accountability. The rapidly changing economic and political circum-
stances of European democracies in the first decade of the twenty-first century serve as our con-
text. The analysis uses ten years of European Social Survey data (2002–2012). This period
encompasses the ‘Great Recession’, which started in 2008, following the global financial crash.
This rare event focused the minds of Europeans on the issue of the economic performance of their
governments and so the mechanisms of accountability should be strong during this period (Whiteley
et al., 2013).
The first section sets out two ideal-type sources of partisanship and examines their connections
to political accountability in democratic systems. We then test our central hypothesis that type-2
partisanship enhances accountability and type-1 partisanship weakens it. The results confirm pre-
vious research suggesting that both types of partisans are to be found in European electorates.
However, political accountability is more strongly influenced by type-2 partisanship. Type-1 parti-
sans are less responsive to policy performance and political events and more likely to evaluate
political performances through their ‘partisan lenses’. The effects are cross-cut by the ideological
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