CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Hobot, Peter Bence |
|---|---|
| Title | Winning Football Games and Votes: The Hungarian National Football Teams Performance as an Irrelevant Event Affecting Government Evaluation |
| Summary | CEU Department of Political Science Two-year MA Program in Political Science Winning Football Games and Votes The Hungarian National Football Teams Performance as an Irrelevant Event Affecting Government Evaluation By Péter Bence Hobot Submitted to Central European University Department of Political Science In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Science Supervisor: Zoltán Miklósi Budapest, Hungary 2021 Abstract How well do voters perform in holding elected representatives accountable, when confronted with event outcomes that are outside of the direct control of elected representatives? This paper analyses how Hungarian voters condition their evaluation of the government as a function of information on the national football team. The results of the research show that voters react to short information about how the national team is faring - with more positive (negative) news about the national football team leading to higher (worse) evaluation of their government. According to the study responsibility attribution is conditioned on party preference. Opposition supporters attribute responsibility to the government significantly more than incumbent supporters when confronted with negative information about the government. When confronted with positive news it is the incumbents, who attribute responsibility to the government to a significantly higher extent than opposition voters do. The paper also builds a strong case that besides explicit responsibility attribution voter also misattributes their general mood to the government. When confronted with positive news about football voters reported a significant increase in their mood level and a ~6 percentage point increase in their government approval. The paper deployed three waves of experimental surveys with slightly different designs around the same concept. The tree waves together incorporate answers from more then 3500 respondents. The experimental logic involved a stratified random selection method to assign respondents to control and treatment groups, which received positive, negative, or no short information about how the Hungarian national team fared recently. Understanding how explicit attribution of responsibility and misattribution of general mood for outcomes of politically (ir)relevant event could help us further develop our institutions governing public accountability and representation. |
| Supervisor | Miklósi Zoltán |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/hobot_peter-bence.pdf |
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