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The conventional wisdom in political science is that incumbency provides politicians with a massive electoral advantage. This assumption has been challenged by the recent anti-incumbent cycle. When is incumbency a blessing for politicians and when is it a curse? Incumbency Bias offers a unified theory that argues that democratic institutions will make incumbency a blessing or curse by shaping the alignment between citizens' expectations of incumbent performance and incumbents' capacity to deliver. This argument is tested through a comparative investigation of incumbency bias in Brazil, Argentina and Chile that draws on extensive fieldwork and an impressive array of experimental and observational evidence. Incumbency Bias demonstrates that rather than clientelistic or corrupt elites compromising accountability, democracy can generate an uneven playing field if citizens demand good governance but have limited information. While focused on Latin America, this book carries broader lessons for understanding the electoral returns to office around the world.
List of contents
1. The puzzle of incumbency bias; 2. Bounded accountability: a theory of incumbency bias; 3. Too big to succeed: incumbency disadvantage in Brazilian municipalities; 4. Commodity shocks and incumbency disadvantage in rural Brazil; 5. When capacity meets authority: the incumbency advantage of southern cone governors; 6. With narrow scope comes great advantage: incumbency bias in Chile; 7. Microfoundations of incumbency bias: evidence from survey experiments; 8. incumbency bias and democracy; References; Appendices.
About the author
Luis Schiumerini is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. He is the co-editor of Campaigns and Voters in Developing Democracies (2019) and his research has appeared in The Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution and Perspectives on Politics.
Summary
We tend to think that incumbents always win elections. Yet, recently, incumbents have been ousted from office across the world. Focusing on Latin America, this book demonstrates that 'incumbency bias' emerges because democracy creates a mismatch between citizens' expectations and incumbents' capacity to deliver.
Foreword
Explains why elections generate incumbency advantage in Argentina and the US, and incumbency disadvantage in India and Brazil.
