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Noisy Retrospection: The Effect of Party Control on Policy Outcomes

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  • M. DYNES, ADAM
  • HOLBEIN, JOHN B.

Abstract

Retrospective voting is vital for democracy. But, are the objective performance metrics widely thought to be relevant for retrospection—such as the performance of the economy, criminal justice system, and schools, to name a few—valid criteria for evaluating government performance? That is, do political coalitions actually have the power to influence the performance metrics used for retrospection on the timeline introduced by elections? Using difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity techniques, we find that US states governed by Democrats and those by Republicans perform equally well on economic, education, crime, family, social, environmental, and health outcomes on the timeline introduced by elections (2–4 years downstream). Our results suggest that voters may struggle to truly hold government coalitions accountable, as objective performance metrics appear to be largely out of the immediate control of political coalitions.

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  • M. Dynes, Adam & Holbein, John B., 2020. "Noisy Retrospection: The Effect of Party Control on Policy Outcomes," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 114(1), pages 237-257, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:114:y:2020:i:1:p:237-257_16
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    Cited by:

    1. Lamberova, Natalia, 2021. "The puzzling politics of R&D: Signaling competence through risky projects," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 801-818.
    2. Clemens, Jeffrey & Veuger, Stan, 2021. "Politics and the distribution of federal funds: Evidence from federal legislation in response to COVID-19," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    3. Benjamin Marx & Vincent Pons & Vincent Rollet, 2022. "Electoral Turnovers," NBER Working Papers 29766, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Yiang Li & Xingzuo Zhou, 2022. "Local political control in educational policy: Evidence from decentralized teacher pay reform under England's local education authorities," Papers 2209.08211, arXiv.org.

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