Government Response Stringency, Opposition Unity, and Electoral Accountability in Electoral Democracies

with Yen-Pin Su (National Chengchi University, yenpinsu@nccu.edu.tw) The Covid-19 pandemic has tremendous impact on political, economic, and social developments across the globe. While some studies show that voters tend to hold incumbent parties accountable for managing the pandemic, others show that the impact of electoral accountability during the pandemic might not be clear. To address the puzzle of this inconclusive finding, we posit that it is necessary to focus on the interaction effects of government response stringency and opposition unity on the electoral performance of incumbent parties. Specifically, we argue that a more stringent government response to tackle the pandemic decreases the popularity of incumbent parties. We further contend that a more united opposition camp is more likely to pose a serious challenge to incumbent parties because it tends to present a more coherent alternative to the government’s proposed agenda. Our hypothesis suggests that a higher level of government response stringency will reduce the incumbent vote to a greater extent when opposition parties in the electoral campaigns are more united. To test this theoretical assertion, we use data for 14 presidential elections and 34 parliamentary elections in electoral democracies from May 2020 to April 2021.