The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
How Lasting Is Voter Gratitude? An Analysis of the Short- and Long-term Electoral Returns to Beneficial Policy
Open accessAbstract
Dominant theories of electoral behavior emphasize that voters myopically evaluate policy performance and that this shortsightedness may obstruct the welfare‐improving effect of democratic accountability. However, we know little about how long governments receive electoral credit for beneficial policies. We exploit the massive policy response to a major natural disaster, the 2002 Elbe flooding in Germany, to provide an upper bound for the short‐ and long‐term electoral returns to targeted policy benefits. We estimate that the flood response increased vote shares for the incumbent party by 7 percentage points in affected areas in the 2002 election. Twenty‐five percent of this short‐term reward carried over to the 2005 election before the gains vanished in the 2009 election. We conclude that, given favorable circumstances, policy makers can generate voter gratitude that persists longer than scholarship has acknowledged so far, and elaborate on the implications for theories of electoral behavior, democratic accountability, and public policy.
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“There is evidence that voters ' evaluations indeed tend to consider politicians ' actions in the realm of natural disasters”
From Precaution and proportionality in pandemic politics: democracy, state capacity, and COVID-19-related school closures around the world (2022) · cites this paper as Bechtel and Hainmueller 2011
Citations
Cites
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“This control is added to account for the well-known interaction between federal and state elections (Kedar 2006; Kern and Hainmueller 2006); given the SPD’s control of the federal government, we may expect that the party attains fewer votes in districts where it also had control of the government…”
Duration neglect in retrospective evaluations of affective episodes.
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Myopic Voters and Natural Disaster Policy
HEALY, A., & MALHOTRA, N. (2009) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055409990104 · Cited by 931
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Retrospective Voting Reconsidered
Healy, A., & Malhotra, N. (2013) · Annual Review of Political Science · doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-032211-212920 · Cited by 667
Bol, D., Giani, M., Blais, A., & Loewen, P. J. (2020) · SocArXiv (OSF Preprints) · doi:10.31235/osf.io/7hpj9 · Cited by 26
“First, they can rally citizens around the Head of the State when these citizens perceive that the policies indeed help solve the issue or at least bring some relief (e.g., Bechtel & Hainmueller 2011; Healy & Malhotra 2009).”
Fleeing the centre: the rise of challenger parties in the aftermath of the euro crisis
HOBOLT, S. B., & Tilley, J. R. (2016) · West European Politics · doi:10.1080/01402382.2016.1181871 · Cited by 654
“There is also increasing evidence that personal economic circumstances, such as declining wages, benefit cuts or unemployment, are important determinants of voting behaviour (Bechtel and Hainmueller 2011; Margalit 2011; Richter 2006).”
BackgroundSubstituting the End for the Whole: Why Voters Respond Primarily to the Election‐Year Economy
Healy, A., & Lenz, G. (2013) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12053 · Cited by 357
“24 For example, Bechtel and Hainmueller (2011) reference the “peak-and-end” heuristic to explain voters’ reactions to government disaster response before elections, an interpretation that our results support.”
BackgroundPolitical trust during the Covid‐19 pandemic: Rally around the flag or lockdown effects?
Schraff, D. (2020) · European Journal of Political Research · doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12425 · Cited by 299
“This argument proposes that citizens evaluate political institutions and policies in times of crisis and extend some degree of gratitude for swift relief (Bechtel & Hainmueller 2011).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Bechtel, M. M., & Hainmueller, J.
- Affiliations
- Washington University in St. Louis (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Bechtel, Michael M.
- Hainmueller, Jens
- Venue
- American Journal of Political Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2011-07-27
- Volume
- 55
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 852-868
- ISSN
- 0092-5853 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-5907
- OpenAlex
- W2110936351
- Cited by
- 63
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 3 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 13.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- autopapers.ssrn.com
- Locations
- American Journal of Political Science (publishedVersion)
- Alexandria (UniSG) (University of St.Gallen) (acceptedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (submittedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Fiscal Policies and Political Economy
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Public Administration and Political Analysis
- Keywords
- election returns, policy performance, democratic accountability, disaster relief, incumbent vote share, voting behavior, Bundestag election
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