Electoral Accountability in Context: How Political Institutions Condition Performance Voting

 The idea that voters use elections to hold governments to account for their performance lies at the heart of democratic theory, and countless studies have shown that economic performance can predict support for incumbents. Importantly, however, recent literature has shown that the link between economic performance and vote electoral outcomes is conditioned by countries " institutional setup , notably the level of " clarity of responsibility ". Clarity of responsibility is commonly employed as a rather generic concept that encompasses both formal institutional structures as well as dynamic traits of the incumbent government. In contrast, this paper distinguishes between two distinct dimensions of the political context: institutional and government clarity. The first captures the formal dispersion of government power, both horizontally and vertically. The second captures the cohesion of the incumbent government. Using multilevel modeling to analyze survey data from 27 European countries, we find that voters " ability to hold governments to account is primarily influenced by the extent to which there is an identifiable and cohesive incumbent, whereas formal institutional rules have a limited impact on performance voting. We also show that the political context matters more to people who are politically informed. These findings have implications for the literature on economic voting and more generally for the debate on electoral accountability.