Assigning blame in multiparty governments
- Author(s)
- Sylvia Kritzinger, Carolina Plescia, Jae-Jae Spoon
- Abstract
This article examines a neglected but fundamental facet of electoral accountability: responsibility attribution under grand coalition governments. Contrary to much of the existing literature that focuses on retrospective voting, this article focuses on responsibility attribution testing the effect of perceived performance of the government and partisan attachments for parties in grand coalition governments. Novel survey questions on responsibility attribution from Austria and Germany show that when the lines of responsibility are blurred, partisanship functions as an important heuristic for all voters including supporters of opposition parties. These findings have important implications for our understanding of electoral accountability and political representation in grand coalition governments.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- External organisation(s)
- University of Pittsburgh
- Pages
- 660-677
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12478
- Publication date
- 06-2019
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 506014 Comparative politics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/b82f6dd7-2e9e-45d6-95d1-137152976e94