Accountability Without Parties? The Political Business Cycle and its Effect on the Re-election of Incumbents: The Case of Quebec Municipalities

Analyses seeking to explain electoral phenomena usually subscribe to a party-based model of electoral competition. However, such an approach is difficult to align with the municipal electoral supply in Canada, where the presence of political parties is the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, where such parties do exist, they have no affiliation with the parties present at the other levels of government. Indeed, they even encourage a certain apoliticism with regard to the political cleavages at the higher levels (Bhérer and Breux, 2011). Elmendorf and Schleicher (2012) claim that, in the United States, the absence of political parties that are purely local has an impact on the electoral dynamics. According to them, the performance of local officials is hardly taken into consideration by voters, which gives incumbents an advantage over new candidates. This paper aims to verify whether this position holds up in the Canadian context by taking the political business cycle theory as a benchmark for the performance of politicians. This theory holds that elected officials increase or decrease spending or taxes in the run-up to elections in order to convince voters of their competence (Rogoff and Sibert 1988; Rogoff 1990). We will look at whether voters punished or rewarded incumbent mayors who had deliberately intervened in the economy in this way. We will also differentiate between whether or not there are competing political parties. Finally, we will test other hypotheses to explain the re-election of incumbent mayors, such as hypotheses concerning voter turnout, the gender and age of candidates as well as socio-demographic characteristics of the population. These hypotheses will be tested using a logistic regression analysis of the re-election of incumbent mayors in the municipal elections of 2009.