選舉課責：拉丁美洲國家政府經濟施政表現與選舉得票相關性之研究

Electoral Accountability: The Relation between Incumbent Governments' Economic Performance and Vote Shares in Latina America

張傳賢(Alex C. Chang) ； 張佑宗(Yu-Tzung Chang)

《台灣政治學刊》 10卷2期 (2006/12) Pp. 101-147

https://doi.org/10.6683/TPSR.200612.10(2).101-147

摘要

選舉課責意指人民視執政者的施政表現，利用選票獎勵與懲戒執政者。專注於選舉課責在拉丁美洲發展狀況的學者，主要著眼於經濟發展與執政者得票率兩者間變化的關聯性。然而，目前各項研究的結果出現南轅北轍，難有交集的地方。其原因不外乎是研究層面的誤置、資料結構的不完整、研究分析方法的誤差，以及忽視政治結構對於選舉課責機制的影響。為解決這些問題爭議，本文從資料的完整性著手，蒐集拉丁美洲各國自民主化之後的選舉資料與經濟發展指標，並且利用混合變項(mixed effects model)將拉丁美洲各國政治結構(political contexts)上的差異對於經濟發展與執政者得票率的影響納入分析變項中。研究結果發現選舉課責機制的確存在拉丁美洲各國民主化過程中。分析中同時發現政治結構亦對於選舉課責機制具有影響力。當執政者於國會中擁有絕大多數席位時，其對於政策執行的政治責任亦愈高。最後，本文同時發現拉丁美洲總統制政府的得票率較內閣制政府的得票率更容易受到經濟政策結果的影響。

關鍵字

選舉課責 ； 拉丁美洲 ； 政治脈絡 ； 得票率

並列摘要

Electoral accountability refers to the mechanism that people are able to use their votes to award or punish incumbent governments based on their policy outcomes and political performance. Conventional studies focusing on electoral accountability in Latin America mainly address the relations between governments' economic performance and incumbents' vote share. However, their conclusions are diverse. We argue that this problem might be due to mistaking levels of analyses, incomplete datasets, mistakes in model selection, and ignoring the influence from political contexts. To deal with these problems, in this paper, we collect electoral results and economic indicators from 28 Latin American democracies. Then, by applying the mixed effects model, we introduce political contexts into my empirical analysis and control them as fixed effects. The statistical results prove that electoral accountability does exist in Latin American democracies. The results also show that political contexts influence electoral accountability. Whenever an incumbent government owns a supermajority in a legislature, it will be highly accountable for its electorate. Finally, this paper also finds that in contrast to their counterparts in parliamentary democracies, governments in presidential democracies are more accountable to their voters for their economic performance.

並列關鍵字

electoral accountability ； Latin America ； political contexts ； vote share

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