CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Burlacu, Diana Elena |
|---|---|
| Title | Quality of Governance, Political Attitudes and Electoral Behavior |
| Summary | This dissertation is an empirical study of the effects of quality of governance on citizens’ political attitudes and behavior. Previous comparative research emphasised the role of institutions in conditioning individuals’ behavior and attitudes. I argue that not only the institutional design, but also the quality of the political institutions in the country constrains citizens' political attitudes, preferences, and decisions. I do this by examining how living in countries with different quality of governance affects people's institutional trust, perceptions of representation and accountability, attitudes towards the welfare state, voting behavior, and election results both in an absolute sense and relative to the design of the political institutions. Doing so this dissertation builds on and contributes to the literature of comparative political behavior, contextual effects, and political institutions, and has substantive and normative implications for the study of electoral democracy. All of the empirical analyses are cross-national and employ multi-level analyses of data from Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the World Value Survey, and different indicators of the quality of governance and political institutions. After a brief introduction, I examine the implications of various aspects of good governance on individuals' confidence in different public and political institutions. I find that some aspects of good governance have a stronger impact on institutional trust than others, but how the institutions provide judicial and bureaucratic efficiency and control of corruption clearly makes them look more ore less trustworthy. In chapter three, I look at the role of the quality of governance in shaping individual preferences toward income redistribution and social welfare policies, and find that bad governance leads to a remarkable inconsistency in individuals' preferences, preferring more extensive social benefits simultaneously with less income redistribution. I investigate further whether people feel less represented and politicians’ less accountable under bad governance in chapter four. I find that institutional design matters more for a sense of procedural representation, while good governance is more important for substantive representation. The next chapter focuses on the link between the impact of ideology, economic evaluations and partisanship on the vote on the one hand, and corruption on the other, and the implications of cultural norms for these relationships. I find that as corruption rises, ideological considerations and sympathies towards the chief executive party weigh less in voters' decision; and while living in a country with a strong culture of corruption does not make people adopt different voting behavior, it instills a higher likelihood of voting against the incumbent. Before concluding, I test the electoral implications of good governance for incumbent's survival in chapter six, and find that the quality of governance is as important as the economy in elections. |
| Supervisor | Toka, Gabor |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/burlacu_diana-elena.pdf |
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