Party Responsiveness to the Collective Judgment of the Electorate
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Author | Seonghui Lee |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010414013520523 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2014
Article
Comparative Political Studies
2014, Vol. 47(14) 1973 –1999
Party Responsiveness to
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DOI: 10.1177/0010414013520523
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of the Electorate: The
Case of Presidential
Popularity in Latin
America
Seonghui Lee1
Abstract
Studies on retrospective voting argue that voters under presidentialism
tend to assign co-responsibility for the president’s performance to her party
in congressional elections. However, it is not uncommon for presidential
parties to distance themselves from an unpopular president or for opposition
parties to cooperate with a popular president. In doing so, parties can signal
to voters that they side with a popular (or against an unpopular) president.
Yet little is known about whether this strategic behavior has electoral payoffs.
This study proposes a popularity-response model, where parties’ electoral
outcomes are a product of how they respond to public opinion on the
president. I hypothesize that parties defecting from an unpopular president
(or cooperating with a popular president) minimize electoral losses and
obtain a further electoral boost. Analysis using an original dataset coding
issue congruence between presidents and parties prior to 35 elections in 18
Latin American countries supports this claim.
1Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
Corresponding Author:
Seonghui Lee, Department of Political Science, Rice University, 6100 Main, MS-24, Houston,
TX 77251-1892, USA.
Email: seonghui.lee@rice.edu
1974
Comparative Political Studies 47(14)
Keywords
presidential popularity, responsiveness, accountability, Latin America,
congressional elections, cost of governing
In presidential systems, the president and congress share responsibility for
policy outcomes. Yet studies on retrospective voting find that presidential
popularity—not the policy responsiveness of Congress—largely influences
congressional electoral outcomes, even in midterm elections. While the retro-
spective voting theory provides a parsimonious and persuasive explanation
for how parties are held accountable through elections, there has been little
attention to the role of strategic behavior by political parties.
More specifically, governing parties can mitigate electoral losses by dis-
tancing themselves from an unpopular president. Conversely, opposition par-
ties can choose to cooperate with a popular president when they expect a
confrontation with a popular president would not help the public image of the
party. An abundance of real-world cases illustrates such strategies.
For example, in the impeachment vote in the Paraguayan lower chamber
in 2002, the Colorado Party turned against its leader, President Macchi,
deciding not to shield him from impeachment (Pérez-Liñán, 2007). President
Macchi’s approval rating at that time was below 10%. Similarly, the faction
from Honduran president Zelaya’s Liberal Party (PN) voted for ousting the
unpopular President in 2009. In both examples, the presidents’ parties
behaved strategically to distinguish themselves from unpopular presidents.
However, it is not surprising that a popular president can garner broader
political support. It is well known that presidents usually enjoy broader sup-
port from the public in honeymoon periods or under the rally-around-the-flag
effect at times of national crisis. In those times, opposition parties are reluc-
tant to criticize presidents with broad public support (Brody, 1991;
Hetherington & Nelson, 2003; Mueller, 1973). This strategic support from
legislative actors is not necessarily limited to honeymoon periods or national
crises, but is more generally applicable. For instance, when the Mexican
President Vicente Fox publicized his position on Iraq in 2003, the main oppo-
sition party PRI, along with the president’s party PAN, trumpeted its support
for the president’s position. At that time, Fox had 56% support, 12 percentage
points above his vote share in 2000. Moreover, sometimes favorable public
opinion toward the president allows her party to maintain its support in spite
of political blows from the opposition. During the impeachment process for
President Clinton, the Democrats successfully shielded the President. At that
time, despite the scandal and impeachment, public support for him was
almost unwavering (Miller, 1999; Zaller, 1998).
Lee
1975
This study investigates whether parties’ decisions to cooperate with (con-
front) a popular (unpopular) president, as exemplified, has electoral payoffs.
Specifically, I examine how parties’ responsiveness to presidential popularity
influences their electoral payoffs in congressional elections, where “party
responsiveness” refers to a party’s cooperative stance toward a popular presi-
dent or an oppositional stance toward an unpopular president. There are sev-
eral reasons to believe that parties will take positions contingent on the
president’s reputation. The strategic politicians theory suggests that support
for the president in the legislature varies depending on the president’s popu-
larity (e.g., Edwards, 1976; Kramer, 1971; Neustadt, 1960; Tufte, 1975). That
is, the president and her party do not always have a cooperative relationship.
The president’s party may want to change its relationship with the president
if cooperation is expected to damage its electoral goals. Similarly, by signal-
ing distance from an unpopular president or demonstrating an amicable rela-
tionship with a popular one, non-presidential parties can also increase their
electoral payoffs. As such, there are incentives for parties to respond to vot-
ers’ assessment of the president. Yet, there has been little effort to examine
the electoral consequence of parties’ responsiveness to presidential popular-
ity and the conditions under which such responsiveness has electoral
implications.
By examining the electoral consequences of party behavior, this study
contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms of electoral accountabil-
ity in presidential systems. First, this study investigates whether (and to what
extent) party strategy matters for electoral outcomes. If this type of party
responsiveness has electoral implications, it would suggest that congressio-
nal accountability under presidentialism is not as closely tied to the presi-
dent’s influence as the retrospective voting literature suggests. Second, this
study provides a more generalized test of such a mechanism by looking at
governing and opposition parties, and their responsiveness on a wide range of
domestic political issues. Accordingly, this study fills a void in the retrospec-
tive voting literature. While that work has focused on electoral consequences
of the president’s economic performance for her party, I demonstrate that this
operates in domains other than the economy and for parties other than the
president’s.
In the following section, I discuss two lines of literature to suggest that
voters can utilize two president-related elements for their vote in congres-
sional elections: their evaluation of the president and the actual relationship
between the president and each party. First, strategic politicians theory
addresses the incentives for parties and politicians to respond to voters’
assessments of the president (Kramer, 1971; Tufte, 1975). Second, retrospec-
tive voting theory explains the rationale for voters to utilize their retrospec-
tive assessment of the president as a cue in elections (cf. Fiorina, 1981).
1976
Comparative Political Studies 47(14)
Driven by the literature, I hypothesize that when a president’s party responds
to an unpopular president by defecting (or conversely, when a non-presidential
party responds to a popular president by cooperating), it can attenuate elec-
toral losses. In other words, congressional election outcomes are associated
with citizens’ collective judgment of the president and political parties’
responsiveness to it.
To test this argument, I develop an index measure of party responsiveness
incorporating presidential popularity and issue congruence between the pres-
ident and each political party. To measure issue congruence, I collect an origi-
nal dataset based on news coverage of salient national issues prior to 35
elections in 18 Latin American countries. Using this dataset, combining
archival electoral results, presidential popularity from public opinion polls,
and issue congruence, I demonstrate in the analysis section that responsive
parties garner more electoral support relative to the previous election, while
non-responsive parties are penalized. Particularly, responsive governing par-
ties reduce their expected electoral loss (e.g., the cost of governing) while
non-responsive governing parties lose, on average, 11.5 percentage points of
electoral support.
Presidential Popularity and Congressional Elections
A large body of research illustrates how and why presidential popularity mat-
ters for congressional electoral outcomes. According to retrospective voting
theory, voters utilize their evaluations of the government’s past performance
to make voting decisions. The rationale behind this argument is that voters
perceive past government performance (e.g., economic outcomes) as a pri-
mary “competency signal” about the incumbent. Therefore, voters hold poli-
ticians accountable by withholding support from poorly...
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