Author
Listed:
- Janet Porras-Mendoza
(The World Bank)
- Charles R. Hankla
(Department of Political Science, Georgia State University, USA)
- Jorge Martinez-Vazquez
(International Center for Public Policy, Georgia State University, USA)
Abstract
Accountability is at the heart of the democratic enterprise. One commonly touted benefit of decentralization is that it promotes this accountability by allowing sub-national governments to target fiscal policy more precisely to the varying preferences of people in different locales. But if accountability is really functioning as it should, then citizens should use the ballot box to reward and punish local officials for their concrete policy behavior. In other words, we should not only be able to link the presence of decentralization with improvements in local public goods, but we should also be able to connect voting behavior in specific locales with the competence of local politicians. Because of the empirical challenges, few scholars have attempted test this prediction directly. Using government information as well as data coded for this project, we examine the case of Peru, assessing how measures of local government success affect the probability of reelection and recall. We find that, when Mayors manage their waste collection and education portfolios more effectively, they are more likely to win office in subsequent elections. They are also less likely to be removed in recall votes. More than that, when Mayors spend more overall, and especially when they spend more on capital projects, we find that their probability of reelection improves, and their risk of recall declines. Overall, our results show clearly that Peru’s citizens use their votes rationally to reward and punish locally elected politicians. This gives substance and support to the notion that, at least under certain circumstances, accountability can function well under decentralized government.
Suggested Citation
Janet Porras-Mendoza & Charles R. Hankla & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez, 2021.
"Electoral Accountability and Fiscal Federalism: The Case of Peru,"
International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU
paper2106, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
Handle:
RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper2106
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper2106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Paul Benson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ispgsus.html .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.