Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud

Economic voting and political context:

a comparative perspective
Christopher J. Anderson
Department of Political Science, Binghamton University (State University of New York), Binghamton,
NY 13902-6000, USA

Abstract

Based on individual-level survey data collected in 13 European democracies, this study

analyzes three alternative ways of modeling how political context affects the relationship
between economic perceptions and vote intention. The three approaches are (1) institutional
clarity of responsibility; (2) governing party target size; and (3) clarity of available alternatives.
The results reveal that political context interacts with economic perceptions to affect voting
behavior. When the institutional context clarifies who is in charge of policymaking, when the
target of credit and blame is large, and when citizens have fewer viable alternative choices,
economic effects are stronger. Taken together, these findings suggest that voters ability to
express discontent with economic performance is enhanced when mechanisms of account-
ability are simple. 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Economic voting; Europe; Accountability; Economic perceptions

In recent years, political scientists have begun to systematically tackle the issue
of how differences in political conditions affect the relationship between the economy
and government support (Anderson, 1995a; Lewis-Beck, 1988; Lewis-Beck and Mit-
chell, 1993; Pacek and Radcliff, 1995; Paldam, 1991; Powell and Whitten, 1993).
In different ways, this line of research has sought to integrate economic and political
factors by examining how a countrys political context mediates the relationship
between the economy and support. Specifically, scholars have sought to explain dif-
ferences in economic effects across countries by arguing that the economy affects
government support more strongly the clearer a governments (or partys) responsi-
bility for policymaking and economic management or the clearer the available alter-
natives are in a country.
This paper continues this line of inquiry by focusing on the three main ways
in which political context has been operationalized: formal institutional (clarity of

0261-3794/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 2 6 1 - 3 7 9 4 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 4 5 - 1
152 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

responsibility), governing party target-size, and clarity of available alternatives.

These three models of politically-mediated economic voting are based on different
notions of how voters assign credit and blame for the state of the economyi.e.
different logics of how political context and individual-level behavior interact. All
three view voters as purposive agents who seek to assign credit or blame to incum-
bents. They differ, however, with regard to the specific elements of the political
environment that are hypothesized to affect economic voting.
The next section reviews these approaches and discusses how they differ. Based
on individual-level survey data collected in 13 European democracies, the study sub-
sequently analyzes the interaction of political and economic effects and the validity
of the proposed explanations of political effects. A concluding section discusses the
findings and spells out avenues for future research.

1. How political context affects the structure of credit and blame

Although the literature on vote and popularity functions in western democracies

is varied and extensive (see Nannestad and Paldam, 1994; Norpoth, 1996 for
overviews), it seldom has directly addressed questions of institutional design and
the role political contexts play in the assignment of credit and blame to incumbent
governments. Instead, it usually has examined the relations among economic percep-
tions or conditions on one hand and government vote or popularity on the other with
the help of single-country studies that implicitly have held many critical political
factors constant. Summarizing the findings of this literature in the early 1990s,
Michael Lewis-Beck (1991, p. 2) concluded that, in general, when economic con-
ditions are bad, citizens vote against the ruling party.
The evidence for economic effects has not always been clear-cut nor consistently
significant across countries, however (Paldam, 1991). In fact, the economy works
quite well as a predictor of party and government support in some countries at some
points in time, but fails to do so on a number of occasions under different conditions
(Anderson, 1995a). Why? To answer this questionalso termed the instability
dilemma by some commentatorsresearchers originally devoted considerable
energy to improving modeling strategies, measurement and operationalization, as
well as data quality. An assumption implicit in such strategies was that the ways in
which the data originally had been collected, modeled, or estimated occasionally was
flawed, but that there were no obvious shortcomings in the way economic effects
were hypothesized to actually affect political behavior.
Such efforts have made considerable strides toward accounting for a number of
inconsistent and null-findings, but they have not usually provided compelling concep-
tual solutions to the instability problem. Put differently, they have not assumed that
the inconsistent economic effects actually may have been the true effects, and that
part of the challenge may lie in accounting for these differences on theoretical
grounds. In contrast to this approach, several recent studies have started with the
assumption that economic effects will vary across countries and across time in sys-
tematic ways, and that political economists need to account for differential economic
 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170 153

effects with the help of theories that incorporate differences in political contexts
across countries.
The idea that political contexts matter and may help explain differences in econ-
omic effects is not new. In fact, Eulau and Lewis-Beck (1985, p. 4) reminded us
more than a decade ago that attribution of responsibility emerges as a key condition
in joining economic grievance to political preferences . Still, we can count on
certain differences across nations, simply because of institutional variations. Along
similar lines, Michael Lewis-Beck (1988, in particular pp. 108ff) speculated in Eco-
nomics and Elections that contextual variation may be crucial for understanding dif-
ferences in economic effects across countries. Several recent studies have sought to
systematically test the idea that political contexts can be systematically measured
and incorporated into economic voting models. How these studies have gone about
incorporating politics formally in economic voting models is reviewed below.

1.1. Institutional differences and clarity of responsibility

How do voters assign responsibility to incumbents for managing the economy?

In recent years, scholars have started to point out that responsibility for economic
management and policymaking seldom is as transparent as simple models of the
relationship between economy and government support would imply. In fact,
responsibility frequently is shared by competing political actors through mechanisms
such as coalition government or simply obscured because of multiple levels of
decision-making and political control (Anderson, 1995b). As a result, political econ-
omists have started to examine in more detail how political contexts help structure
the way citizens assign credit and blame to governments for macroeconomic per-
formance.
Upon closer inspection, it turns out that there are different ways to conceptualize
how political contexts may help to mediate the relationship between economic per-
formance and political preferences. For the purposes of this study, I refer to them
as institutional clarity of responsibility, governing party target size, and clarity of
available alternatives. All three are closely related but differ in the specific ways of
how citizens and political context interact. At the level of individuals, all three
approaches assume that individual voters seek to reward or punish incumbents for
economic performance and are variably helped or hindered by the political context
that exists. That is, they hypothesize that voters efforts to assign responsibility for
the countrys economy and express approval or disapproval are systematically filtered
by the political context (see also Bellucci, 1991; Srensen, 1987; Paldam, 1991).
Powell and Whitten (1993) were among the first and also among the most general
to measure institutional differences across countries in a systematic fashion and
model economic effects as being mediated by how much a countrys formal insti-
tutional structure allows citizens to establish who is responsible for economic man-
agement. Powell and Whittens operationalization and measurement of the clarity of
responsibility concept is quite encompassing. It involves the classification of political
systems into those where responsibility is clear and those where it is not based on
factors such as one-party vs multi-party rule, whether there is bicameral opposition,
154 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

decision making powers for opposition parties in parliament, or party cohesion. Their
analysis of objective economic conditions and aggregate election outcomes found
that economic effects were stronger in those countries that had clearer levels of
responsibility (see also Lewis-Beck, 1988, pp. 108110; Powell, 1989).

1.2. Economic voting and governing party target size

Powell and Whittens clarity of responsibility index involves several insti-

tutionally-based aspects of political systems that may mediate the economyvote
relationship. Unfortunately, the generality of the index prevents a concise analysis
of what exactly it is about the political context that mediates the relationship between
economic performance and support for incumbents. Moreover, the index is static to
the extent that it measures political context as varying across countries in predictable
ways without accounting for changes that may occur in the political context over
time. An alternative view of how differences in political context may mediate the
relationship between economy and government support is the governing party target
size approach. While it, too, assumes that individual voters seek to reward or punish
incumbents for economic performance, it differs from Powell and Whitten by sug-
gesting that clarity of responsibility not only varies across countries because of differ-
ences in formal decisionmaking procedures that are unlikely to vary much over time,
but that it also is variable within and across countries because of election outcomes
and elite bargaining that periodically reshape the political landscape (Anderson,
1995a; Lewis-Beck and Mitchell, 1993). Specifically, democracies shift the power
to govern and enact policy at more or less regular intervals by way of the electoral
process. Elections shuffle the cards of government anddepending on the political
systemthey install new actors, change the composition of governing coalitions, or
confirm political parties and executives in office with an expanded (reduced) or large
(small) mandate. Thus, the extent to which voters assign responsibility to political
actors changes over time and it differs across countries because of election outcomes.
An example may help fix ideas: Imagine two countries with identical institutional
designs and economic performance. Country A has a single-party government that
holds 60% of the seats and 100% of all cabinet posts, Country B a minority coalition
government consisting of four parties, each of which occupies 10 percent of the seats
in parliament and 25% of all cabinet posts. In this hypothetical case of two countries
with the same formal policymaking institutions, we would still expect different econ-
omic effects because of the differences in target size. Voters in both countries pre-
sumably seek to target parties for the assignment of credit and blame, but they should
have an easier time doing so in Country A than in Country B because the target is
simply larger in the former.1 It would also seem plausible that parties who have a
greater stake in policymaking and decisionmaking should be held more responsible
for the outcomes produced, in this case economic performance.

1
Thus, a correlation between the PowellWhitten index and target size may exist empirically, but
there does not have to be one on conceptual grounds.
 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170 155

This approach is similar to the Powell and Whitten clarity of responsibility argu-
ment in that voters are expected to have an easier or harder time assigning credit
and blame depending on how easily they can identify who is in charge. In this sense,
both the PowellWhitten and the target size approach can be classified as being
about how clear responsibility is. The target size approach differs, however, in that
voters are not required to be particularly sophisticated about formal institutional rules
or other aspects of the political process. All they need to know is which party has
the most power in the government, and reward and punish this party to a greater
degree. Thus, all that is necessary is for voters to know who is most in charge of
decisionmaking at the national level.2

1.3. Clarity of available alternatives

Both the PowellWhitten argument and the target size approach assume that those
in power are the targets of citizens intentions to assign credit and blame and that
those who can be more easily identified as having responsibility also will be the
more likely targets of citizens voting behavior. That is, it is assumed that there are
alternatives available when voters seek to throw incumbents our of office. Note,
however, that this can work only if there are other credible actors who can benefit
from such behavior.
There is considerable variation in the structure of party systems across contempor-
ary democracies, and not all systems provide clearcut or easily predictable alterna-
tives to incumbent governments. Political scientists frequently have measured the
nature of party systems with the help of such indicators as party system fractionaliz-
ation based on as the effective number of parties in the system (Rae, 1967; Lijphart,
1984; Taagepera and Shugart, 1993). The nature of the party system should matter
for the effects of macroeconomic performance on governing party support because
fragmented party systemsidentified by a large effective number of partiesshould
make it more difficult for voters to identify a clear alternative to the incumbent
government. Put simply, in such countries there tends to be greater uncertainty about
the likely shape of an alternative future government that will form after the election
has been held. Translated into the research on economic voting, this would mean
that, aside from the clarity of responsibility and the governing party target size, the
effects of economic conditions also should be mediated by the clarity of available
alternatives, or what Lewis-Beck has called incumbent alternatives for dissent
(Lewis-Beck, 1986, 1988). Economic effects should be stronger when the number of

2
The target size theory also could be empirically correlated with what is known as the Prime Minister
party effect (cf. Anderson, 1995a), given that in nearly all coalition governments the vote share of the
Prime Ministers party grows at the expense of the other coalition parties. However, it is worth keeping
in mind that this does not have to be the case, and I would argue that in coalitions where the Prime
Ministers party is not the largest party, voters should take both the Prime Ministership and governing
party size into account when assigning credit and blame. Unfortunately, there are too few cases that
would permit systematic analyses across these kinds of distinctions (i.e. prime minister party vs governing
party size).
156 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

effective partiesi.e. available alternative governmentsis smaller. A more clearly

defined set of viable alternatives to the incumbent government should lead citizens
to more readily express content or discontent with the ruling party or parties (see
also McDonald et al., 1999).
An example may again be useful: In a multi-party (11) system with one governing
party that holds 51% of legislative seats and ten parties that share the remaining
49% equally, citizens have a multitude of ways to blame the governing party by
supporting one of the opposition parties. However, voting for any one of these oppo-
sition parties is unlikely to throw the incumbent government out of office, and the
significance of a dissenting vote during bad times is decreased. In contrast, voters
in a country with a simple 2 party system, where one party holds 51% and the other
49% of the seats, will find it easy to identify who the alternative government might
be. Note that in both of these hypothetical systems, the institutional structure a la
Powell and Whitten and the governing party target size (in this case 51%) may well
be identical.3 However, what matters are the available alternatives. This available
alternatives approach assumes that a greater effective number of parties leads to an
decreased probability that citizens desert the governing party when macroeconomic
performance is considered unsatisfactory.

1.4. Taking stock

The three approaches outlined here share important assumptions regarding the
relationships among economy, political context, and government support. Specifi-
cally, they view voters as purposive agents who seek to assign credit and blame for
economic performance to incumbents. Moreover, they regard the political context as
a constraint on individual voters choices and thus seek to model the interactive
relationship of economics and politics on support. Aside from these similarities, these
also differ with regard to precisely what it is about different political systems that
facilitates or complicates the assignment of credit and blame. The institutional clarity
of responsibility approach argues that the structure of formal and informal power
relationships and policymaking authority matters. This approach is based on features
of political systems that are fairly stable, and it assumes an electorate that understands
the intricacies of parliamentary government with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
In contrast, the target size and clarity of available alternatives approaches neither
presume such awareness nor are they based on fairly immutable country-character-
istics. Instead, they view voters as willing to reward and punish and doing so to a
greater extent given the simple condition that they know who is in charge of pol-
icymaking and who the alternatives are. Finally, the approaches differ in that the
target size and available alternatives approaches are much more specific than the
Powell and Whitten clarity of responsibility argument regarding what it is about a

3
Note, again, that there may be a cross-national correlation between the PowellWhitten index and
target size measure on one hand and the available alternatives measure on the other. However, such a
correlation is not an automatic consequence of how political context has been conceptualized.
 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170 157

political system voters take into account when seeking to reward or punish govern-
ments. Thus, the Powell and Whitten approach is more general than the other two,
but also less able to model how citizens reason at the individual level about various
aspects of the political context because it groups together a variety of institutional
elements that make up that context.

2. Data and measures

To date, these approaches have only been put only to separate tests based on
aggregate data. That is, we have not examined the validity of these models with the
help of individual-level data, nor have we examined their usefulness side-by-side
with identical data. To test the empirical validity of these conceptualizations, I rely
on cross-national individual-level data. Specifically, I make use of the Eurobarometer
42.0, collected between 28 November and 31 December 1994. The Eurobarometer
is a semi-annual set of public opinion surveys conducted in the member states of
the European Union since 1973. Based on multistage probability samples with ran-
dom selection of respondents, these surveys are based on the population of each
member state, aged 15 and over. The countries included in the study thus were the
(then) twelve member states of the European Union (Belgium, Denmark, France,
Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and
the UK). This particular survey also was carried out in Norway; which also is
included in this study.
Each countrys survey usually includes about 1000 respondents. There are two
small exceptions to this: Germany, where the Eurobarometer has conducted surveys
with about 2000 respondents (1000 in East and West Germany each) since unification
in 1990, and Luxembourg, the smallest member state, where the sample usually
involves about 500 respondents. I treat the German sample as if it originated from
one population and excluded respondents from Northern Ireland because of the spe-
cial political situation there.

2.1. Dependent variable

The dependent variable is incumbent vote choice, measured 0,1 with 1 denoting
vote for the incumbent. It is based on the question: If there were a general election
tomorrow, which party would you vote for? Based on individuals vote choice, two
variants of this dependent variable are analyzed: One categorizes a vote for the gov-
erning parties (in the case of single-party government) or one of the governing parties
(in the case of coalition parties) as a vote for the incumbent government (scored 1;
all others 0). The other focuses only on prime minister parties, scoring respondents
who would vote for the prime ministers party 1, and all others 0.4

4
There are reasons to believe that government support should be disaggregated by prime minister and
coalition parties. To test for possible differences, I performed both kinds of analyses (see also Anderson,
1995b; Wilkin et al., 1997). When different results obtained, this is specified in the text.
158 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

2.2. Individual-level independent variables

Economic perceptions are measured with the help of sociotropic and egocentric
measures. The sociotropic question wording is Compared to 12 months ago, do you
think that the general economic situation in this country now is a lot better, a little
better, stayed the same, a little worse, a lot worse. The egocentric measure reads:
Compared to 12 months ago, the financial situation of your household now is a lot
better, a little better, stayed the same, a little worse, a lot worse.
To be consistent with the rich literature on voting behavior in Europe, I included
several control variables: ideology, religiosity, and social class (for a similar
approach, see Lewis-Beck, 1988). Consistent with cleavage theories of electoral
behavior, these variables are intended to capture long-standing predispositions to
support political parties of different leanings. Ideology is measured by leftright self-
placement: In political matters people talk of the left and the right. How would
you place your views on this scale? (left: 1; right: 10) Religiosity is intended to
measure the religious cleavage, differentiating between those who consider them-
selves religious and those who do not. This is measured by the following question:
Whether you do or you dont follow religious practices, would you say that you
are religious, not religious, an agnostic, an atheist? Finally, social class is self-
identification with a particular social class, measured with the help of the following
question: If you were asked to choose one of these five names for your social class,
which would you say you belong to? Middle class, lower middle class, working
class, upper class, upper middle class. Respondents who were unwilling or unable
to answer any of these questions were excluded from the analysis. These variables
were included simply as controls in order to avoid misspecification. Their effects
should vary by country. Because they are not the focus of the present analysis, they
will not be discussed further below.

2.3. Political context variables

Clarity of responsibility is taken from Powell and Whittens (1993) study, which
ranked 19 countries on a scale from less clear to more clear. The countries included
in that study that also are included in the Eurobarometer data set are: Belgium,
Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, and Nor-
way. The original scale theoretically ranged from 0 (more clear) to 5 (less clear);
the actual cases included in this analysis range between 0 and 3.2 (see Table 1).
Governing party target size is measured in two ways: parliamentary strength and
cabinet strength (for prime ministerial parties). Parliamentary strength measures the
percentage of seats held by the prime ministers party, whereas cabinet strength
measures the percentage of total cabinet positions held by the prime ministers party.
These percentages were rescaled to vary between 0 (for 0%) and 1 (for 100%). These
data were taken from various issues of the Annual Data Yearbook of the European
Journal of Political Research.
Finally, available alternatives were measured with the help of the Laakso and
 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170 159

Table 1
Descriptive statistics

Variable Minimum Maximum Mean SD

Retrospective egocentric economic evaluations (5=high) 1.00 5.00 2.90 0.84

Retrospective sociotropic economic evaluations (5=high) 1.00 5.00 2.88 0.99
Leftright self-placement (0=left; 10=right) 1.00 10.00 5.16 1.98
Religiosity (4=high) 1.00 4.00 3.45 0.89
Social classsubjective (5=high) 1.00 5.00 2.41 1.17
PowellWhitten index (high=less clear) 0.00 3.20 1.90 1.27
Effective number of parliamentary parties (available 2.17 5.41 3.45 1.02
alternatives)
Prime minister party target sizecabinet 0.35 1.00 0.73 0.25
Prime minister party target sizeseats 0.16 0.58 0.40 0.12
Government target sizeseats 0.41 0.80 0.55 0.01
Vote intention governing parties 0.00 1.00 0.30 0.46
Vote intention prime minister party 0.00 1.00 0.22 0.42

Taagepera (1979) index calculating the effective number or parliamentary parties in

a system. The effective number of parties is computed as follows:5
1
N (1)

n
2
p i
i1

where pi is the proportion of parliamentary seats for the ith party (Lijphart, 1984,
p. 120). This formula contains information about the number and relative size of the
parties in the system. It thus helps to differentiate not only between two- and multi-
party systems, but it is also a more subtle measure than simply counting the number
of parties that gain representation or receive votes. The proposed measure takes the
relative strength and parliamentary viability of parties into account. Or, as Taagepera
and Shugart (1993, p. 455) have put it:

The advantage of using the effective, rather than the actual, number of parties is
that it establishes a nonarbitrary way to distinguish significant parties from less
significant ones. The construction of the index is such that each party weights
itself by being squared. Tiny parties contribute little to the index, while large
parties contribute relatively more.

Again, these data were taken from various issues of the Annual Data Yearbook of

5
Instead of using the more widely known Rae/Taylor index of party system fractionalization, I measure
the effective number of parliamentary parties in a system. Note, however, that the formula for the effective
number of parties carries the same information as Raes index of party system fractionalization, only
expressed in a different metric. The reader can obtain Raes fractionalization index (F) by substituting
the value for the effective number of parties (N) in the following formula: F=1(1/N).
160 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

the European Journal of Political Research. The descriptive statistics for the vari-
ables used in the analysis are shown in Table 1.

3. Analysis

I first estimated general multivariate logistic regression models of government and

prime minister party support that did not include any of the contextual variables.
The dependent variable is coded 1 if the respondent supports the incumbent(s) and
0 otherwise. Table 2 shows the results.
As hypothesized, the coefficients for the economic variables turned out to be stat-
istically significant and in the expected direction. Sociotropic effects were stronger
than egocentric ones, with only marginal differences across the two dependent vari-
ables (prime minister support/government support). As it turned out, this difference

Table 2
Multivariate economic voting models for Western Europe, 1994 (logistic regressions)

Independent variable Dependent variable: Dependent variable:

Government support Prime minister party support

Parameter SE Parameter SE
estimate estimate

Social class 0.0798***a 0.0193 0.1171*** 0.0212

Religiosity 0.1847*** 0.0276 0.2629*** 0.0318
Leftright self-placement 0.0967*** 0.0115 0.0858*** 0.0125
Sociotropic economic evaluations 0.3361*** 0.0254 0.3333*** 0.0280
(retrospective)
Egocentric economic evaluations 0.0994*** 0.0291 0.1283*** 0.0316
(retrospective)
France 0.1625 0.1046 0.8017*** 0.1206
Belgium 0.2527* 0.0971 0.6279*** 0.1104
Netherlands 1.0414*** 0.0927 0.5675*** 0.1064
Germany 0.0583 0.0813 0.1155*** 0.0833
Italy 0.0297 0.0994 1.0948*** 0.1227
Luxembourg 0.6306*** 0.1272 0.2860** 0.1411
Denmark 0.3746*** 0.0897 0.0522 0.0919
Ireland 0.1774* 0.0957 0.4291*** 0.1012
Britain 0.5262*** 0.1035 0.5254*** 0.1038
Greece 0.1148 0.1010 0.1231*** 0.1014
Spain 0.3823*** 0.1082 0.3711*** 0.1085
Constant 3.0254*** 0.1559 3.2433*** 0.1723
N 10,374 10,347
2 log likelihood 12433.092 10981.230
Goodness of fit 10248.499 10293.217
Cox and Snell pseudo R2 0.076 0.062
c2 (d.f.) 99.9951 (8)*** 21.0103 (8)**

a
***P0.001; **P0.05; *P0.1two-tailed. Portugal is the reference category.
 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170 161

across sociotropic and egocentric effects held throughout the analysis. Sociotropic
effects were consistently more significant, both statistically and substantively, than
egocentric ones. I will therefore focus primarily on the description of sociotropic
effects in the remainder of the paper.
To test the three conceptualizations of how political context and economic effects
interact, I estimated three different models for each contextual factor: Models 1 and
2 estimated the effects of the economic variables on government (or prime minister
party) support for split samples (high/low clarity, large/small target size, many/few
alternatives), whereas a third model estimated the interactive effects on the basis of
the total sample.

3.1. Clarity of responsibility effects

Tables 3 and 4 shows the results of logistic regressions that estimated economic
effects on separate samples of countries that have low and high levels of clarity of
responsibility as defined by Powell and Whitten. Following Powell and Whittens
design, I split the sample into those countries scoring 2 or below (high clarity) and
those scoring 2 and above (low clarity). The table also shows the results of logistic
regression models that tested the Powell Whitten index in interaction with the econ-
omic variables. If the Powell and Whitten argument holds, we should see stronger
economic effects under conditions of clear responsibility than under conditions of
less clear responsibility.
Turning first to the effects on total government support (Table 3), the results con-
firmed the hypothesis. Sociotropic economic effectswhich always were more sig-
nificant substantively than egocentric effectswere stronger under conditions of
clear responsibility (0.39 vs 0.27). Egocentric effects were stronger under low
responsibility, but they also were not particularly powerful. Moreover, the high clar-
ity model accounted for more of the variance in the dependent variable.
The interactive model estimated with the help of the total sample (Table 4) con-
firmed these findings. By itself, sociotropic economic assessments were highly sig-
nificant (egocentric effects did not achieve statistical significance) and the coefficient
was in the expected direction. Moreover, when economic perceptions were estimated
in interaction with the Powell and Whitten clarity of responsibility index, the results
showed that ambiguous responsibility tempers the economic effects considerably.
Put differently, as countries move from clear to obscure responsibility, the economic
effects had less impact. When government support was examined as a whole, the
findings reported here on the basis of individual level data thus were consistent with
those reported in Powell and Whittens earlier study based on aggregate election
results.
As a side note, it is worth pointing out that governments in countries with low
levels of clarity tended to benefit from institutional ambiguity. That is, governments
in countries where it was easier for voters to identify who was in charge of decision-
making tended to have lower levels of support than governments in countries where
such assignment of responsibility is less clear (Table 4).
To examine whether the effect held when we considered prime minister party
 162

Table 3
Economic voting models by clarity of responsibility (logistic regressions)

Independent variable Dependent variable: Government support Dependent variable: Prime minister party support

Low clarity High Clarity Low clarity High Clarity

Parameter SE Parameter SE Parameter SE Parameter SE

estimate estimate estimate estimate

Social class 0.0318 0.0236 0.0256 0.0369 0.1824*** 0.0268 0.0388 0.0394
Religiosity 0.1399***a 0.0319 0.4152*** 0.0612 0.1836*** 0.0368 0.4892*** 0.0713
Leftright self-placement 0.0821*** 0.0150 0.1142*** 0.0215 0.0482** 0.0167 0.1344*** 0.0229
Sociotropic economic 0.2709*** 0.0325 0.3888*** 0.0451 0.3521*** 0.0371 0.3050*** 0.0477
evaluations (retrospective)
Egocentric economic 0.0669* 0.0381 0.0378 0.0515 0.1464*** 0.0424 0.1035* 0.0551
evaluations (retrospective)
Constant 2.3272*** 0.1776 4.3230 0.2856 3.0012*** 0.2037 4.9918*** 0.3272
N 5521 3126 5521 3126
2 log likelihood 7184.068 3506.730 6129.758 3164.755
Goodness of fit 5509.046 3090.986 5522.499 3065.670
C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

Cox and Snell pseudo R2 0.029 0.072 0.037 0.065

c2 (d.f.) 21.7286 (8)** 6.7884 (8) 4.7100 (8) 11.5435 (8)

a
***P0.001; **P0.05; *P0.1two-tailed.
 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170 163

Table 4
Economic voting models by clarity of responsibility (logistic regressions)

Independent variable Dependent variable: Dependent variable:

Government support Prime minister party support

Parameter estimate SE Parameter estimate SE

Social class 0.0246 0.0199 0.1171*** 0.0220

Religiosity 0.1999***a 0.0279 0.2458*** 0.0321
Leftright self-placement 0.0975*** 0.0123 0.0807*** 0.0134
Sociotropic economic evaluations 0.3899*** 0.0495 0.3385*** 0.0517
(retrospective)
Egocentric economic evaluations 0.0450 0.0556 0.1144* 0.0586
(retrospective)
Clarity of responsibility 0.2992*** 0.0735 0.0272 0.0812
(high=less clear)
Clarity of responsibilitysociotropic 0.0428** 0.0211 0.0031 0.0227
economic evaluations (retrospective)
Clarity of responsibilityegocentric 0.0057 0.0241 0.0071 0.0260
economic evaluations (retrospective)
Constant 3.4366*** 0.1958 3.5383*** 0.2126
N 8647 8647
2 log likelihood 10690.931 9358.161
Goodness of fit 8597.428 8600.590
Cox and Snell pseudo R2 0.054 0.042
c2 (d.f.) 39.5101 (8)*** 9.9358 (8)

a
***P0.001; **P0.05; *P0.1two-tailed.

support in isolation, Tables 3 and 4 also shows identical models with the differently
defined dependent variable. The results reveal no institutional effects on prime minis-
ter party support. That is, there was no discernible difference in economic effects
between low and high clarity of responsibility countries. The coefficients across the
split sample were virtually identical, and the combined model estimated on the basis
of the complete sample showed no significant effects for the interaction terms.
The logic of the clarity of responsibility argument thus found support only when
we considered total government supportwhich oftentimes consists of the sum of
support for several political parties. Because coalition government is at the heart of
why it is more difficult for voters to assign credit and blame in some countries,
prime minister parties may thus be sheltered from the clarity of responsibility effects
as voters shift support within the coalition and not necessarily from governing to
opposition parties (Anderson, 1995b). At minimum, these tests revealed that the
Powell and Whitten index has the hypothesized effects when we examined the sum
total of government support, thus providing additional validation for their analysis
on the basis of individual-level data.
164 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

3.2. Governing party target size

Target size was measured by the parliamentary and cabinet strength of the prime
ministers party. Higher levels of strength in both should make that partyand, for
that matter, any partya bigger target for the assignment of credit and blame. Econ-
omic effects should therefore be stronger, the higher the level of responsibilityi.e.
the bigger the target.
Tables 5 and 6 shows the results of split-sample and interacted model estimations,
identical to those conducted for the clarity of responsibility variable. The sample
was split at the mean into the following two groups. Parliamentary strength: 40%
and below/above. This differentiated between the truly sizable prime minister parties
and the moderate to small ones. Cabinet strength: 75% of all cabinet posts. It also
differentiated between dominant prime minister parties and more equal (to small)
ones.6
The results consistently were in the hypothesized direction. Regardless of whether
we examined parliamentary or cabinet strength, bigger targets engendered stronger
economic effects. That is, governing parties with more objective political responsi-
bility suffered greater losses of support among those dissatisfied with economic per-
formance and achieved greater gains among those who evaluated the state of the
nations economy positively. Note, however, that this conclusion again was largely
confined to sociotropic effects.
In addition, target size had a significant independent effect (Table 6): Regardless
of economic assessments, bigger targets were more likely to experience losses in
support than smaller ones. Both the split sample analysis as well as the interactive
models displayed significant coefficients in the expected direction, thus validating
the target size hypothesis across types of measures (parliamentary vs cabinet
strength) and types of analysis (total vs split samples).

3.3. Clarity of available alternatives

Finally, I tested the clarity of available alternatives argument measured by the

effective number of parties in the system. Economic effects were expected to be
stronger, when there were fewer viable alternatives to the incumbent government in
the party system. Table 7 shows the results of analyses that are identical to those
presented so far (i.e. split-sample and combined models).
They reveal consistent and statistically significant coefficients across the two dif-
ferent types of analysis. Moreover, the relationships were in the hypothesized direc-
tion. Specifically, a smaller set of available viable alternatives was associated with
larger economic effects. That is, when the effective number of parties in the system
was large, economic effects were attenuated. Put differently, when citizens had many,

6
Note that the effects reported below are immune to slight changes in the definition of the cut-off.
Additional analyses splitting the samples at the median revealed no differences. This is also evidenced
by the results obtained on the basis of the interaction models.
Table 5
Economic voting models by governing party target size (parliamentary seats and cabinet posts) (logistic regressions). Dependent variable: Prime minister
party support

Independent variable Seats in parliament Cabinet posts

Small target Large target Small target Large Target

Parameter SE Parameter SE Parameter SE Parameter SE

estimate estimate estimate estimate

Social class 0.1608***a 0.0345 0.0925*** 0.0259 0.0824** 0.0333 0.0807** 0.0295
Religiosity 0.1325** 0.0526 0.2936*** 0.0371 0.2944*** 0.0571 0.2869*** 0.0406
Leftright self-placement 0.0092 0.0209 0.1328*** 0.0152 0.1911*** 0.0206 0.0892*** 0.0170
Sociotropic economic 0.2474*** 0.0466 0.4065*** 0.0328 0.1937*** 0.0439 0.4784*** 0.0378
evaluations (retrospective)
Egocentric economic 0.1311** 0.0537 0.1327*** 0.0387 0.0698 0.0525 0.1352** 0.0444
evaluations (retrospective)
Constant 2.4583*** 0.2803 4.1597*** 0.1891 4.0625*** 0.2827 4.0599*** 0.2113
N 3545 6829 4149 5329
2 log likelihood 3731.064 7368.787 3923.530 5879.626
C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

Goodness of fit 3548.512 6744.238 4171.353 5302.966

Cox and Snell pseudo R2 0.019 0.066 0.045 0.066
c2 (d.f.) 2.0209 (8) 10.860 (8) 27.2735 (8)*** 9.0688 (8)

a
***P0.001; **P0.05; *P0.1two-tailed.
165
166 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

Table 6
Economic voting models by governing party target size (parliamentary seats and cabinet posts) (logistic
regressions) dependent variable: Prime minister party support

Independent variable Seats in parliament Cabinet posts

Parameter SE Parameter SE
estimate estimate

Social class 0.1120***a 0.0207 0.1042*** 0.0208

Religiosity 0.2471*** 0.0302 0.2565*** 0.0305
Leftright self-placement 0.0906*** 0.0123 0.0914*** 0.0124
Sociotropic economic evaluations 0.0053 0.0977 0.0173 0.0842
(retrospective)
Egocentric economic evaluations 0.1147 0.1178 0.0549 0.0999
(retrospective)
Target size (high=large) 1.3309 0.8381 0.8357** 0.3978
Target sizesociotropic economic 0.8894*** 0.2349 0.5036*** 0.1076
evaluations (retrospective)
Target sizeegocentric economic 0.0239 0.2800 0.0812 0.1277
evaluations (retrospective)
Constant 3.0875*** 0.3853 3.0177*** 0.3398
N 10,374 8647
2 log likelihood 11106.611 11045.552
Goodness of fit 10325.746 10302.062
Cox and Snell pseudo R2 0.051 0.056
c2 (d.f.) 4.0326 (8) 17.7418 (8)**

a
***P0.001; **P0.05; *P0.1two-tailed.

but less sizable, choices to defect from the governing party, economic effects actually
were weaker. The same results were obtained when support for governing parties as
a whole was examined (not shown here).
The differences in effects again was confined to the sociotropic item, with the
size of the coefficient in the sample with a large number of available alternatives
about twice that of the sample with fewer alternatives (0.5 vs 0.25). Moreover, the
interaction model shows that the effective number of parties in a system had a strong
and positive independent effect on governing party support. The more viable alterna-
tives there were in a system, the more governing party support was strengthened.
Thus, consistent with the hypothesis, the results point to what one might call a
stabilization effect or a clarity of alternatives effects. In the limit, it suggests that
too many alternatives are associated with higher levels of support for prime minis-
ters parties and a reduction in defection rates from them. Why multiparty systems
appear to shelter governing parties from economic effects is not altogether clear and
cannot be answered with the data at hand. We may speculate that voters in multiparty
systems also have more deeply entrenched partisan attachments, thus making it less
likely that they will defect from any party, including governing parties. In this case,
economic voting would not be about how many alternatives citizens have available
for expressing discontent, but simply about long-standing attachments to particular
Table 7
Economic voting models by clarity of available alternatives (logistic regressions). Dependent variable: Prime minister party support

Independent variable Effective number of parties Interaction model

Small Large

Parameter estimate SE Parameter estimate SE Parameter estimate SE

Social class 0.0024 0.0306 0.2370*** 0.0280 0.1242*** 0.0206

Religiosity 0.3727***a 0.0440 0.0729* 0.0434 0.2486*** 0.0301
Leftright self-placement 0.1829*** 0.0179 0.0109 0.0171 0.0927*** 0.0123
Sociotropic economic evaluations 0.4927*** 0.0400 0.2496*** 0.0374 0.7035*** 0.0969
(retrospective)
Egocentric economic evaluations 0.1224** 0.0456 0.1133** 0.0438 0.1721 0.1090
(retrospective)
Number of of parties (high=large) 0.3042** 0.0945
No. of partiessociotropic economic 0.1009*** 0.0266
evaluations (retrospective)
No. of partiesegocentric economic 0.0135 0.0298
evaluations (retrospective)
C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

Constant 5.1936*** 0.2280 1.8987*** 0.2289 4.6311*** 0.3515

N 5320 5054 10,374
2 log likelihood 5320.193 5682.205 11143.487
Goodness of fit 5307.475 5069.149 10330.860
Cox and Snell pseudo R2 0.090 0.026 0.047
c2 (d.f.) 16.4703 (8)** 11.8611 (8) 8.3481 (8)

a
***P0.001; **P0.05; *P0.1two-tailed.
167
168 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170

parties. In addition, consistent with the other contextual effects shown above, we
may speculate that a simply two-party system facilitates economic voting because
the alternatives are clearer. Such an interpretation would be compatible with both
Powell and Whittens clarity of responsibility thesis and the target size explanation
because it implies that voters prefer simple to complicated sets of choices.

4. Discussion

This study started with the assumption that integrating economic and political
factors in economic voting models is likely to yield more comprehensive expla-
nations of how citizens, their political environments, and the economy are related.
Specifically, this paper sought to test three related but alternative ways of modeling
how different aspects of political contexts affect the relationship between economic
perceptions and vote choice. The three approaches tested here on the basis of individ-
ual-level cross-national data were the institutional clarity of responsibility, governing
party target size, and clarity of available alternatives approaches.
The results reveal that political context interacts with economic perceptions to
affect voting behavior. When the institutional context clarifies who is in charge of
policymaking and when the target of credit and blame is large, economic effects are
stronger. Conversely, when clarity of responsibility is obscured and when the level
of responsibility is low, governing parties are less affected by how citizens evaluate
the nations economy. Note, however, that the results also revealed that many alterna-
tives available to express (dis)content does not mean that citizens are more likely to
defect from governing parties. In fact, when citizens have fewer choices available
to assign blame to incumbents and credit the opposition, economic effects are
stronger. Taken together, these findings suggest that voters ability to express discon-
tent with economic performance is enhanced when accountability is simple. Voters
economic assessments have stronger effects on government support when it is clear
who the target is, when the target is sizable, and when voters have only a limited
number of viable alternatives to throw their support to.
The results also showed that sociotropic economic effects consistently outperfor-
med egocentric ones, and that sociotropic perceptions were affected by contextual
differences whereas egocentric ones were not. Pocketbook votingwhile statistically
significant in a number of modelsdid not have the same substantive or statistical
effects as sociotropic economic voting. The analysis thus adds another piece of evi-
dence in favor of the sociotropic economic voting thesis.
Maybe more importantly, the research reported on here also identifies important
boundary conditions for economic voting research and highlights the need to be
sensitive to, and specific about, the political environment in which economic voting
takes place. Whether and to what extent citizens assign credit and blame for the
countrys economic performance depends on whether they can identify who is in
charge, how much responsibility they have, and what the alternatives are. This find-
ing is important for understanding the nexus between macroeconomy and govern-
ment support because the political context citizens, policymakers, and parties act in
 C.J. Anderson / Electoral Studies 19 (2000) 151170 169

differs across countries and changes over time. It is seldom obvious how citizens
should react to economic performance given that most democracies exhibit some
institutional ambiguity and political change. Overall, the analysis thus modifies the
simple rewardpunishment model of economic voting and suggests that students of
economic voting and government support take systematic account of a countrys
political context. Moreover, the analysis shows that pointing out specifically what
it is about the political context that matters is likely to be a fruitful avenue for
future research.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Joann Cruz for help with handling the data set. The data
used in this study are available from the University of Michigans Inter-university
Consortium for Political and Social Research (Study No. 6518). Thanks also to the
participants of the Snderborg conference for stimulating discussions and helpful
comments. In particular I am grateful to Michael Lewis-Beck, Peter Nannestad, and
Martin Paldam for their feedback. Any remaining errors should be considered poor
judgment in the face of good advice.

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