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Personal or partisan incumbency advantage? Evidence from an electoral reform in Italy

Author

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  • Marco Alberto De Benedetto

    (University of Messina; Birkbeck, University of London)

Abstract

We analyze the incumbency advantage using a large data set on Italian municipal elections held from 1993 to 2011. We first apply a non-parametric Sharp Regression Discontinuity Design comparing parties that barely win an election to those that barely lose, exploiting the fact that partisan incumbency status changes discontinuously at the threshold of margin of victory of zero. In order to disentangle the personal incumbency advantage from the partisan effect, we rely on a reform that introduced mayoral term limit, and exploit the exogenous change on the incumbency status of mayors keeping the partisan incumbency status constant. We find that the incumbency advantage is essentially driven by the personal effect. The results are robust to different specifications and estimation strategies with excellent balance in observable characteristics. Also, the effect of interest seems to be larger in magnitude for municipalities located in the South of Italy compared to northern municipalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Alberto De Benedetto, 2019. "Personal or partisan incumbency advantage? Evidence from an electoral reform in Italy," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 1903, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bbk:bbkefp:1903
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    File URL: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/27398
    File Function: First version, 2019
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Incumbency Status; Political Participation; Sharp RDD; Term Limit;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights
    • K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior

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