Does the Public Hold Governors Accountable for Policy Outcomes?

• Author: Jennifer Wolak,Srinivas Parinandi
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211041044
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2022, Vol. 75(4) 1051–1064

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211041044

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Does the Public Hold Governors

Accountable for Policy Outcomes?

Jennifer Wolak

1

and Srinivas Parinandi

2

Abstract

What are the origins of gubernatorial popularity? Past studies debate whether governors are substantively evaluated

based on their performance in off‌ice, with some arguing that the origins of approval may be idiosyncratic to particular

governors. These studies typically consider gubernatorial approval in a handful of states or patterns of approval in the

aggregate. We improve on this research by drawing on a richer data source: the Co operative Congressional Election

Study. We consider both individual-level and state-level explanations of gubernatorial popularity with a sample of over

300,000 respondents across the 50 states from 2006 to 2018. We explore how party, policy outcomes, and government

performance shape levels of gubernatorial approval. We show that people evaluat e governors based on the ideological

direction of policy outcomes in the states. When state policy outcomes align with their ideological preferences, people

report higher levels of approval for the job performance of their governor. We also conf‌irm the importance of party and

state economic performance for gubernatorial approval.

Keywords

governors, approval, gubernatorial approval, policy outcomes, public opinion

For governors, their popularity with the electorate is a

valued resource. When seeking reelection, governors who

enjoy high levels of public support are better able to ward

off strong challengers and are more likely to secure the

support of voters in their state (Bardwell 2002;Kenney

and Rice 1983;King 2001;Svoboda 1995). Within state

government, public approval serves as an informal power

for governors (Beyle and Ferguson 2008). Popular gov-

ernors are perceived as more inf‌luential by state legislators

(Cohen 2018) and tend to achieve greater success at

implementing their policy goals (Kousser and Phillips

2012). Within state bureaucracies, greater gubernatorial

approval serves as useful informal power that grants

governors greater inf‌luence over bureaucrats (Dometrius

2002;Sigelman and Dometrius 1988). In the case of state

judiciaries, popular governors are more likely to see their

executive power upheld by state supreme court justices

(Johnson 2015).

Given the importance of gubernatorial approval in

politics, we are interested in better understanding its or-

igins. Somewhat surprisingly, prior studies of guberna-

torial approval have raised doubts about whether

governors are substantively evaluated based on their job

performance. Some fail to f‌ind much leverage over ex-

plaining the origins of gubernatorial approval, suggesting

that roots of popularity may be idiosyncratic to particular

governors (Adams and Squire 2001;Crew and Weiher

1996). Other studies disagree on whether even funda-

mentals like partisanship and economic performance in-

form gubernatorial approval (e.g., Cohen 1983;Larimer

2015;MacDonald and Sigelman 1999;Orth 2001). If

governors are not evaluated based on the outcomes or

performance of state government, then it raises concerns

about whether citizens are able to provide a meaningful

check on the elected off‌icials in their state. To the degree

to which gubernatorial popularity is used by state exec-

utives to achieve inf‌luence with state legislators and

bureaucrats, it might not be a resource that has been

sincerely earned by governors.

Using responses from the 2006 to 2018 Cooperative

Congressional Election Study, we explore both

1

Department of Political Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing,

MI, USA

2

Department of Political Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO,

USA

Corresponding Author:

Jennifer Wolak, Department of Political Science, Michigan State

University, 318 South Kedzie Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.

Email: wolakjen@msu.edu