Election Timing in Parliamentary Democracies

在许多议会制国家，下届选举的时间由现任政府自行决定。领导人不需要等到任期结束；相反，他们可以自由地在对自己有利的时候举行选举，在他们希望获胜的时候举行选举。该提案概述了一个理论和实证研究设计，以探讨政府何时举行选举以及选举时间如何影响选举结果。进行选举的决定是用博弈论建模的。在每个阶段，领导人必须在举行选举或等待之间做出选择。如果他们等待，那么选民就有了进一步的机会来评估政府的表现。因此，一个受欢迎的政府如果等待，其受欢迎程度可能会因糟糕的结果而受到损害。决定提前举行选举，而不是等待，取决于领导人对自己选举前景的信念。假设现任领导人目前很受欢迎，并试图决定是否提前举行选举。如果这位领导人相信她的政党有能力，有适当的政策来解决她国家的问题，那么她等待的风险就很小。她的政党很可能表现良好，这将增加而不是减少她的选举运气。然而，对于一个对自己的能力缺乏信心的领导人来说，等待会危及她的选举前景。她预料到自己的表现会很糟糕，如果她再等下去，她的支持率会下降。因此，能力最差的领导人，也就是那些不期望表现出色的人，最有动力要求提前举行选举。该模型的固有特征是，领导人根据他们对未来表现的预期来选择是否举行选举。这个建模平台对各种假设都很灵活。一种建模选择是，领导人的期望可以简单地基于她对政府能力的评估。另一种情况是，领导者的信念可能源于对信息的早期接触。当政府为了短期利益（政治经济周期）而操纵政策工具时，这是一种特别重要的形式。尽管最不称职的领导人总是最有动力要求提前选举，但在某些情况下，即使是称职的领导人也不想拖延。这些条件，如多数党的规模、反对派的团结和公众舆论的水平，产生了关于提前选举可能发生的时间的假设。这些因素是否确实加速了选举，可以通过持续时间分析进行实证检验。由于能力最差的领导人是那些最不愿意等待的人，提前举行选举比公众预期的要早，这表明现任者对未来表现的怀疑。在实证模型中，当选举发生的时间远早于预期，即估计的风险较低时，政府的民意支持率可能会下降。此外，该理论还预测，在出人意料的提前选举之后，政府的表现可能会很差。这个项目提供的不仅仅是选举时间的经验估计；它发展并检验了选举时间、政府绩效和选举结果之间的理论联系。

In many parliamentary systems, the timing of the next election is at the discretion of the current government. Leaders are not required to wait until the end of their term; rather, they are free to call elections when it is advantageous to them - when they expect to win. The proposal outlines a theoretical and empirical research design to explore when governments call elections and how the timing of elections influences the electoral result. The decision to call an election is modeled using game theory. At each stage, leaders must choose between calling an election or waiting. If they wait, then the voters get a further opportunity to assess the government's performance. Thus, a popular governments that waits risks having its popularity undermined by poor outcomes. The decision to call an election, rather than wait, depends on a leader's beliefs about her electoral future. Suppose that the incumbent leader is currently popular and trying to decide whether to call an early election. If the leader believes that her party is competent and has the appropriate policies to address her country's problems, then she risks little by waiting. Her party is likely to perform well which enhances, rather than diminishes, her electoral fortune. Yet, for a leader less confident in her abilities, waiting jeopardizes her electoral prospects. She anticipates poor performance, and expects her future popularity to decline if she waits. Hence, it is the least competent leaders, those who do not expect to perform well, who have the greatest incentive to call an early election. The inherent feature of the model is that leaders choose whether to call elections based on their expectations about future performance. This modeling platform is flexible to a variety of assumptions. One modeling choice is that a leader's expectation could be based simply on her assessment of government competence. Alternatively, a leader's beliefs could stem from early access to information. A particularly important form of this is when the government has manipulated policy instruments for short-term gains (political business cycles). Although it is the least competent leaders who always have the strongest incentive to call an early election, there are conditions under which even competent leaders do not want to delay. These condtions, such as size of majority, unity of opposition, and level of public opinion, generate hypotheses about when early elections are likely to occur. Whether these factors do hasten elections can be tested empirically using duration analysis. Since the least competent leaders are the ones with the least incentive to wait, elections called earlier than the public expects signal the incumbent's doubts about future performance. In terms of the empirical model, when elections occur much earlier than anticipated, that is, the estimated harzard is low, then the government is likely to suffer a decline in popular support. In addition, the theory also predicts that government performance is likely to be poor following unexpectedly early elections. This project provides more than empirical estimates of when elections occur; it develops and tests theoretical linkages among election timing, government performance, and electoral outcomes.