Political competition, party polarization, and government performance

Rune Sørensen ()

Public Choice, 2014, vol. 161, issue 3, 427-450

Abstract: Lack of party competition may impair government efficiency. If the voters are ideologically predisposed to cast their votes in favor of one political party, they may reelect an underperforming incumbent. Party polarization may magnify this effect since the median voter faces a higher cost of selecting a better, but ideologically distant incumbent. Alternatively, if the electorate is evenly divided between parties, polarization may induce parties to invest more effort in improving their election prospects. The current paper analyzes efficiency in Norwegian local governments. Efficiency has been measured by means of panel data on government service output over a 10-year period. Electoral dominance has been measured as number of elections wherein one party bloc receives at least 60 % of the votes, measured over six consecutive elections. Party polarization is defined as the ideological distance between the two party blocs, and it is measured on basis of survey data on the ideological preferences of elected politicians. Lack of party competition reduces efficiency, the effect being stronger in governments where more party polarization exists. These agency losses are larger in high-revenue municipalities. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Keywords: Political competition; Electoral dominance; Party polarization; Efficiency; Accountability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1007/s11127-014-0168-0

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