Economic and Political Performance in Developing Democracies

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The panel explores how economic performance affects political performance in the context of developing democracies. While most of the established literature on economic voting focuses on advanced economies, several characteristics of developing democracies suggest that this relationship might be different or, at least, cary alternative normative implications about whether economic voting can serve as an incentive to induce good government performance.

Developing democracies' relationship with the world economy, for instance, is different than that of the typical advanced economy. Many are dependent on commodity prices, on foreign savings, and/or on remittances, all of which subject them to the influence of exogenous economic factors. Two papers in this panel explore the impact of these exogenous factors the political performance. Tertytchnaya et al examine the extent to which voters in Kyrgyzstan attribute exogenous variation in remittances flows to governments and whether information can correct this misattribution, while Zucco and Campello examine how commodity prices and international interest rates are connected to the fall/interruption of both democratic and authoritarian governments in Latin America.

Developing democracies are also typically much lower information environments than their advanced counterparts, due to lower education levels and weaker media markets. Hence, perceptions about economic performance might be formed in a different way and might be contingent on factors that do not vary, or vary little across the developing world. The paper by Carlin et al, in this sense, examines how the quality of the "information environment" affect the alignment between perception of the economy and actual indicators.

Finally, high- and hyper-inflationary periods are also much more common in developing democracies, which should also affect how voters obtain and process information about economic performance. Schiumerini & Steinberg tackle this issue by examining the relationship between the existence and thriving of black markets for dollars and presidential approval in Argentina.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 12: Comparative Politics in Developing Countries

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 11: Comparative Politics

Chair

• Cesar Zucco Getulio Vargas Foundation

Discussants

• Cecilia Hyunjung Mo

• Marc J. Hetherington University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Individual Presentations

• Correcting the Misattribution Effect of Remittances in Kyrgyzstan - Katerina Tertytchnaya, University College London; Catherine E. De Vries, Free University Amsterdam; Hector Solaz, University of Oxford; David Doyle, University of Oxford

• Exogenous Economic Conditions and the Survival of Governments in Latin America - Cesar Zucco, Getulio Vargas Foundation; Daniela Campello, Getulio Vargas Foundation

• The Information Environment and the Accuracy of Economic Sentiment - Ryan Carlin, Georgia State University; Gregory Love, University of Mississippi; Cecilia Martinez-Gallardo, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Matthew Singer, University of Connecticut; Timothy Hellwig, Indiana University, Bloomington

• The Black Market Blues: The Political Costs of Illicit Currency Markets - Luis Schiumerini, University of Notre Dame; David A. Steinberg, Johns Hopkins University