Political Fatalism and the Loss of Accountability

• In Event: External Influences on Candidate Evaluations

Abstract

Previous research has found that citizens often do a poor job of holding their representatives accountable. When faced with information about their preferred candidates, they may be more likely to shift their own preferences to align with the candidate than to re-evaluate the candidate based on their pre-existing views. In this study, I conduct a series of experiments and replicate this finding, showing that even correcting misinformed views about candidate positions does not lead to changes in perceptions of political figures. This lack of accountability is exacerbated by policy fatalism, the tendency to believe that government policies will not be able to address societal problems and that societal problems like crime or inequality are fixed and inevitable. Individuals who show higher levels of policy fatalism were less likely to respond to information. These troubling findings indicate that voters may be unwilling or unable to hold political actors responsible for their policy decisions because they do not believe government can make a difference anyway.

Author

• Nathaniel Swigger, Ohio State University