Voters reward incumbents for conditions they judge good and punish them for conditions they judge bad, rather than choosing between promised programmes.
Key's argument was that the electorate is a rational god of vengeance and reward rather than a policy analyst, and Fiorina formalised it in 1981: judging the record is far cheaper than evaluating manifestos, and requires no expertise. The complication is that the record voters use includes droughts, shark attacks and the economy of the final six months.
In practice
- A government presiding over a recovery it did not cause is returned, and one presiding over a shock it could not prevent is not.
- A manager judged on a quarter's numbers is being assessed the same way, with the same accuracy.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is economy of effort: judging a record is cheap and judging competing programmes is expensive, so voters use the observed result as a summary of competence.
- In its favour
- The regularity is robust across countries and elections, and it makes democratic accountability work without requiring voters to be policy analysts.
- Against it
- The interpretation is contested, since voters have been shown to punish incumbents for droughts, shark attacks and sports results, which suggests the judgement is less about performance than the theory needs.
- Standing
- The regularity is robust; the interpretation is not. Voters have been shown to punish incumbents for events outside their control, which weakens the reading of it as accountability.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- What can be proved and measured about power