2021/03/10 by Charles T. McClean · 4 citations
Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies #Fiscal Policies and Political Economy
paper · doi:10.1177/0010414021997172
How can incumbent governments benefit when they control the timing of elections? The conventional wisdom is that incumbents gain an advantage by timing elections to coincide with favorable economic conditions. An alternative mechanism that has received less attention is the element of surprise: the incumbent’s ability to exploit the opposition’s lack of election preparedness. I theorize and empirically test this surprise mechanism using candidate-level data from Japanese House of Representatives elections (1955–2017). The results show that in surprise elections, opposition parties recruit fewer, lower-quality candidates, spend less money campaigning, coordinate their candidates less effectively, and ultimately receive fewer votes and seats. Evidence from fixed effects models and exogenously timed by-elections further suggest that surprise matters more in shorter, competitive election campaigns and helps incumbents more with confronting inter-party as opposed to intra-party electoral competition. These findings add to our understanding of how strategic election timing can undermine electoral accountability.