Dynasties and Democracy: The Inherited Incumbency Advantage in Japan by Daniel M. Smith

Supplementing literature study with in-depth unstructured interviews from the two dominant political parties in Ghana on how they mobilize funds, the key argument of this article is that the loss of a presidential election in Ghana is a reduction in a party’s major income streams. Unlike other studies that look at incumbency advantage in party funding from the angle of governments’ policies that weaken the opposition parties, this article analyses incumbency from their sources of funds. It fulfils two major objectives of identifying the sources of funds of political parties and establishing the link between these sources and incumbency.

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How Much of the Incumbency Advantage is Due to Scare-Off?

Political Science Research and Methods ◽

10.1017/psrm.2014.43 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 493-514 ◽

Cited By ~ 26

Author(s):

Andrew B. Hall ◽

James M. Snyder

Keyword(s):

Regression Discontinuity ◽

Regression Discontinuity Design ◽

Incumbency Advantage ◽

Previous Election ◽

Us Senate ◽

State Legislative

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the degree to which incumbents scare off challengers with previous officeholder experience. The estimates indicate a surprisingly small amount of scare-off, at least in cases where the previous election was nearly tied. As Lee and others have shown (and as we confirm for our samples) the estimated party incumbency advantage in these same cases is quite large—in fact, it is about as large as the average incumbency advantage for all races found using other approaches. Drawing from previous estimates of the electoral value of officeholder experience, we thus calculate that scare-off in these cases accounts for only about 5–7 percent of the party incumbency advantage. We show that these patterns are similar in elections for US House seats, statewide offices and US senate seats, and state legislative seats.

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Challenger Entry and Voter Learning

American Political Science Review ◽

10.1017/s0003055407070165 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 101 (2) ◽

pp. 303-320 ◽

Cited By ~ 58

Author(s):

SANFORD C. GORDON ◽

GREGORY A. HUBER ◽

DIMITRI LANDA

Keyword(s):

Empirical Research ◽

Electoral Competition ◽

Relevant Information ◽

Strategic Interaction ◽

Incumbency Advantage ◽

Retrospective Voting ◽

Positive Assessment ◽

Threat Of Entry ◽

The Relationship ◽

Different Levels

We develop a model of strategic interaction between voters and potential electoral challengers to sitting incumbents, in which the very fact of a costly challenge conveys relevant information to voters. Given incumbent failure in office, challenger entry is more likely, but the threat of entry by inferior challengers creates an incentive for citizens to become more politically informed. At the same time, challenges to incumbents who perform well can neutralize a voter's positive assessment of incumbent qualifications. How a voter becomes politically informed can in turn deter challengers of different levels of competence from running, depending on the electoral environment. The model permits us to sharpen our understanding of retrospective voting, the incumbency advantage, and the relationship between electoral competition and voter welfare, while pointing to new interpretations of, and future avenues for, empirical research on elections.

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