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Concurrent Elections and Political Accountability: Evidence from Italian Local Elections

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This paper analyses the effects of holding concurrent elections in multi-tiered government structures on turnout decision and voting behaviour, based on municipal and provincial electoral data from Italy during the 2000s. When the less-salient provincial elections are held concurrently with the highly salient municipal elections, we observe three main effects: (1) turnout increases significantly by almost ten percentage points; (2) issues that are specific of the more salient (mayoral) contest affect the less salient (provincial) contest, with mayors' fiscal decisions impacting on the vote share of provincial incumbents; (3) issues that are specific to the less salient (provincial) contest stop affecting provincial elections outcomes. These findings shed light on how voters acquire information on incumbent politicians, and proves that the effectiveness of an election as an accountability tool may be hindered by the concurrence with higher-stakes elections.

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  • Bracco, Emanuele & Revelli, Federico, 2017. "Concurrent Elections and Political Accountability: Evidence from Italian Local Elections," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201719, University of Turin.
    • Handle: RePEc:uto:dipeco:201719
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    Cited by:

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    2. Raffaella Santolini, 2021. "To Divorce Or Not To Divorce: Is This A Property Tax Problem?," Working Papers 451, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    3. Erlingsson, Gissur Ó, 2020. "A Stranger Thing? Sweden – The Upside Down of Multilevel Trust," Working Paper Series 1356, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    4. Francesco Armillei & Enrico Cavallotti, 2021. "Concurrent elections and voting behaviour: evidence from an Italian referendum," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 21164, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    5. Francesco Ferlenga, 2023. "Better to be direct? Evidence from the abolition of direct elections in Italian local governments," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 822-891, November.
    6. Foellmi, Reto & Heim, Rino & Schmid, Lukas, 2022. "Voter Turnout in Concurrent Votes," Economics Working Paper Series 2209, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science, revised Sep 2022.
    7. Balasubramaniam, Vimal & Bhatiya, Apurav Yash & Das, Sabyasachi, 2020. "Synchronized Elections,Voter Behavior and Governance Outcomes : Evidence from India," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1276, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    8. Sebastian Garmann, 2020. "Voter turnout and public sector employment policy," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 845-868, October.
    9. Francesco Armillei & Enrico Cavallotti, 2021. "Concurrent elections and voting behaviour: evidence from an Italian referendum," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 21164, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    10. Andersen, Jørgen Juel & Sørensen, Rune Jørgen, 2022. "The zero-rent society: Evidence from hydropower and petroleum windfalls in Norwegian local governments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).

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    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General

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