Author's Keywords: democratic accountability, economic voting, Eastern Europe, Poland, political parties, party systems, elections	Convention All Academic Convention is the premier solution for your association's abstract management solutions needs. Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! Click here for more information.
Association: Name: American Political Science Association URL: http://www.apsanet.org
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p64275_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Zielinski, Jakub. "Electoral Control in New Democracies: Fluid Party Systems as Perverse Incentives" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia Marriott Hotel, Philadelphia, PA, Aug 27, 2003 <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p64275_index.html>

Zielinski, J. , 2003-08-27 "Electoral Control in New Democracies: Fluid Party Systems as Perverse Incentives" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia Marriott Hotel, Philadelphia, PA Online <.PDF>. 2009-05-26 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p64275_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Review Method: Peer Reviewed Abstract: The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of fluid party systems on democratic accountability. To this end, we proceed in three steps. First, we represent party systems as incentive structures that influence the motivation of individual legislators to act in the interest of the electorate. This allows us to investigate how the incentives generated by fluid party systems, i.e. by the prospect of switching political parties when economic outcomes are bad, interact with the incentives generated by the system of repeated elections, i.e. by the prospect of an electoral sanction when economic outcomes are bad. Second, we analyze a new database that contains information about all legislative incumbents and all competitive elections that took place in Poland after the country's transition to democracy. We establish the following: (a) the reelection probability of incumbents from governing parties is a decreasing function of economic performance, while the reelection probability of incumbents from governing parties is an increasing function of economic performance; (b) the probability that incumbents from a governing party switch to a non-governing party is a decreasing function of economic performance; (c) the reelection probability of incumbents who switch parties and contest elections as members of an opposition party is the same as the reelection probability of incumbents who were members of an opposition party from the beginning. In the third step, we use these results to construct a counterfactual comparison of electoral incentives that exist in Poland's fluid party systems to the electoral incentives that would have existed in Poland had its party system been stable. In particular we compare the expected value of an election when party switching is possible to the expected value of an election when party switching is not an option. We find that holding economic performance constant, the expected value of an election with switching is greater than the expected value of an election without switching. This implies that individual incentives generated by fluid party systems erode the incentives generated by the system of repeated elections and thus reduce the extent of democratic accountability.

Electoral Rules, Nominations Procedures, and Politicians' Incentives for Party Loyalty in 10 Mixed-Member Systems

Electoral Incentives and Party Switching in Mixed-System Legislatures

Electoral Control in New Democracies: Fluid Party Systems as Perverse Incentives