Election Timing in Parliamentary Democracies

议会民主国家的选举时间

• 批准号: 9975352
• 负责人: Alastair Smith
• 金额: $ 7.11万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-07-01 至 2001-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9975352&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Election; Timing; Parliamentary; Democracies

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.

在许多议会制度中，下一次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他们有利的时候--当他们希望获胜的时候--举行选举。该提案概述了一项理论和实证研究设计，旨在探索政府何时举行选举以及选举时间如何影响选举结果。举行选举的决定是用博弈论建模的。在每个阶段，领导人都必须在举行选举或等待之间做出选择。如果他们等待，那么选民就有进一步的机会来评估政府的表现。因此，一个等待的受欢迎的政府可能会因为糟糕的结果而削弱其支持率。决定举行选举，而不是等待，取决于一位领导人对她的选举未来的信念。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。如果这位领导人认为她的政党有能力，并有适当的政策来解决她国家的问题，那么她就不会冒太大的风险。她的政党很可能表现良好，这增加了而不是减少了她的选举财富。然而，对于一位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。她预计会有糟糕的表现，如果她等待的话，她未来的人气将会下降。因此，最不称职的领导人，也就是那些不希望表现良好的领导人，才有最大的动机提前举行选举。该模式的固有特征是，领导人根据他们对未来表现的预期来选择是否举行选举。该建模平台可以灵活地对各种假设进行建模。一种模式选择是，领导人的期望可以简单地基于她对政府能力的评估。或者，领导者的信念可能源于对信息的早期接触。一种特别重要的形式是，当政府操纵政策工具以获取短期收益时(政治商业周期)。尽管最不称职的领导人总是有最强烈的动机提前举行选举，但在某些情况下，即使是有能力的领导人也不想拖延。这些条件，如多数党的大小，反对党的团结，以及公众舆论的水平，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，可以使用持续期分析进行实证检验。由于最不称职的领导人是最没有动力等待的人，提前举行选举表明现任总统对未来的表现持怀疑态度。在经验模型方面，当选举比预期提前很多时，即估计哈扎德的支持率较低，那么政府的民意支持率可能会下降。此外，该理论还预测，在意外提前举行选举后，政府的表现可能会很糟糕。这个项目提供的不仅仅是对选举时间的经验估计；它还开发和测试了选举时间、政府绩效和选举结果之间的理论联系。