Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Political Science
First Advisor
Huber, Gregory
Abstract
Institutions structure politics in important ways that can both help and hurt accountability. This dissertation is a collection of three self-contained essays that study issues of political institutions and accountability. Abstracts of the three essays are provided below. Legislative Term Limits and Variation in State Intergovernmental Transfers (Chapter 2):State transfers provide local governments with revenues that are consequential in both magnitude and impact. Similarly, these transfers are a significant expense for state governments. This state aid funds, among other things, education, public health, and welfare programs. Given the importance of these funds for local governments, it is important to understand how institutional choices may affect the distribution of state aid. I use data on state intergovernmental transfers to county areas from 1982--2012 to analyze the relationship between term limits and variation in transfers. Using a difference-in-differences style design, I show that both the adoption and implementation of legislative term limits are associated with greater within-state-year variation in transfers to county areas. Term Limits and Strategic Challenger Entry (Chapter 3):It is well understood that electoral institutions, and term limits in particular, affect electoral accountability. In this project, I explore an additional avenue through which term limits can impact accountability. I develop a political agency model with strategic challengers to examine the accountability effects of term limits in the presence of strategic challenger entry. Analysis of the game reveals that term limits may lead strong challengers to delay entering, preferring to run in an open-seat election over running against an incumbent. This behavior of the challenger leads high-type incumbents to exert less effort while in office under certain conditions. In addition to this accountability effect, the model predicts that term limits negatively affect selection. Term limits create conditions for low-type incumbents to be more willing to exert high effort, leading the voter to retain low types more frequently. This pattern is exacerbated by strategic entry. However, strong challengers' strategic delay behavior disappears when term limits are removed, improving accountability and selection. This project contributes to our understanding of how term limits interact with, and potentially interfere with, electoral accountability and selection when challengers make strategic entry decisions. The Weight of Precedent: Executive Norms (with Daniel A.N. Goldstein; Chapter 4):Political executives often adhere to informal traditions established by their predecessors. Without the backing of formal laws, elites have incentives to violate norms, particularly if doing so yields a political advantage. When do constraining executive norms carry weight and when do they falter? We examine an infinite horizon principal-agent model to analyze the maintenance of executive norms. We consider one version of the model which is played only between the executive and her party. The results following from this model demonstrate the importance of intra-party accountability in the maintenance of norms, as well as the role that differences in discounting can play---expectedly, short-sighted executives are more willing to violate norms than comparatively more patient parties. Then, we consider a second version of the model with two parties and two executives to show how expectations about out-party norm adherence can also play an important role in maintaining norms. In general, the study has implications for how informal institutions regulate executive behavior and for understanding the interplay between informal and formal institutions.
Recommended Citation
Schumock, Collin Thomas, "Three Essays on Political Institutions and Accountability" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1266.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1266
