Under the Cover of Crisis: Electoral Accountability and Policy License

• In Event: Accountability, Crisis and Excuse-Making

Abstract

I present a legislative and electoral model that examines how crises impact the efficacy of democratic institutions. The model demonstrates that crises may undermine legislative checks-and-balances by incentivizing veto-players to support policy that goes against their preferences, i.e., pandering. As a result, an agenda-setter is provided with greater license to implement their preferred policy. Yet, eased legislative passage comes at the cost of decreasing the likelihood that the optimal policy will be enacted in response to a crisis. Despite undermining policy fit, crises may improve the selection of politicians through elections. Crises can reveal a politician's willingness to compromise, i.e., their ideological resolve, and, thus, allow citizens to remove obstinate politicians. Hence, crises produce a trade-off between improved accountability via better electoral selection and potentially undermining policy fit. Overall, I find that crises hold significant consequences for democratic institutions, and I consider the implications of the model for legislation produced following recent financial crises.

Author

• Daniel A N Goldstein, Yale University