The Politics of Potholes Service Quality and Retrospective Voting in Local Elections

By conditioning their support for political incumbents on observed performance outcomes, voters can motivate elected officials to represent their interests faithfully while in office. Whether elections serve this function in subnational US government remains unclear, however, because much of the exi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of politics Vol. 79; no. 1; pp. 302 - 314
Main Authors Burnett, Craig M., Kogan, Vladimir
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chicago University of Chicago on behalf of the Southern Political Science Association 01.01.2017
University of Chicago Press
Subjects
Cities
Conditioning
Elections
Grievances
Neighborhoods
Politics
Public officials
Voters
Voting
municipal services
service quality
city and urban politics
retrospective voting
voting behavior
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Summary:By conditioning their support for political incumbents on observed performance outcomes, voters can motivate elected officials to represent their interests faithfully while in office. Whether elections serve this function in subnational US government remains unclear, however, because much of the existing research on retrospective voting in these contexts focuses on outcomes that are not obviously salient to voters or over which the relevant government officials have limited influence. In this study, we examine one outcome—the quality of local roads—that is both salient and unquestionably under the control of city government. Our analysis leverages within-city variation in the number of pothole complaints in one of America’s largest cities and shows that such variation can explain neighborhood-level differences in support for incumbents in two political offices—mayor and city council—across several electoral cycles.
ISSN:0022-3816
1468-2508
DOI:10.1086/688736