Incumbency Effect in Competitive Autocracies: evidence from Venezuela

Carlos Di Bonifacio (), Guido Merzoni () and Federico Trombetta

No dis2402, DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS)

Abstract: We document the presence of a strong incumbency disadvantage in local elections in a competitive autocracy: Venezuela. Using newly coded data on municipal election outcomes, we find that municipalities having experienced a narrow victory by the pro-regime party (PSUV) are 24 percentage points less likely to re-elect a pro-regime mayor in subsequent elections compared to those with marginal opposition victories. This disadvantage is primarily influenced by voter turnout, as participation rates increase on average by 6 percentage points in municipalities where the pro-regime party narrowly won. The incumbency disadvantage is driven precisely by those elections leading to a low future abstention rate. Overall, we stress the important role of voters’ mobilization even in the context of autocratic regimes.

JEL-codes: D71 D72 D78 D79 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dipartimenti.unicatt.it/diseis-wp_2402.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dis:wpaper:dis2402

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emilio Colombo ().