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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accountability | 2/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountability | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:30:58.181172+00:00 | kb-cron |
The role of elections in fostering accountability is often undermined by electoral manipulation and fraud. By preventing citizens from removing leaders through elections based on their performance in office, electoral manipulation breaks down accountability and may undercut the consolidation of democratic institutions. Electoral manipulation is not rare; some estimates are that in the 1990s and 2000s, up to one fourth of elections suffered some form of substantial manipulation. This includes a large array of pre-election and election-day tactics, such as outlawing rival parties and candidates, employing violence and intimidation, and manipulating voter registration and vote count. Some efforts to improve accountability by preventing electoral manipulation and fraud have obtained a certain measure of success, such as using cell phone applications for monitoring and disseminating polling station results and employing domestic or international election observers. However, governments may simply alter the type of manipulation or where it occurs in order to deceive observers and monitoring agencies. Governments, politicians, and political parties are more likely to resort to electoral manipulation and fraud when they believe they might be removed from office and when they face few institutional constraints to their power. Low political competition has also been linked to some forms of manipulation, such as abolishing presidential term limits. Well-connected candidates are more likely to resort to vote count fraud. Governments may engage in electoral manipulation not only to obtain victory at a given election or to remain in office longer, but also for post-election reasons, such as reducing the strength of the opposition or increasing their own bargaining power in the subsequent period.
=== Administrative ===
==== Common goods ==== Politicians may be incentivized to provide common goods as a means of accountability. The ability of voters to attribute the credit and blame of outcomes also determines the extent of public goods provision. Research suggests that public goods provision is conditional on being able to attribute outcomes to politicians as opposed to civil servants. This attribution can be enhanced by more short-run and visible inputs and outcomes such as famine relief or access to drinking water, whereas lower-visibility issues such as sanitation and education may be more difficult to attribute credit for and thus less likely to provide for. Another condition determining how voters use the provision of public goods to hold leaders accountable is whether the prioritization of public goods is determined either directly via vote or delegated to a governing body. An experiment in New Mexico regarding proposed spending during the state's 2008 special summer legislative session provides evidence that legislators update their positions when learning about voters' policy preferences, indicating that a representative democracy can increase accountability when politicians learn about voters' preferences. A 2016 experiment in Afghanistan regarding rural development projects, however, finds that when voters directly prioritize their preferences at the ballot box, they perceive the quality of local government to be higher than when a governing committee prioritizes development projects. These contrasting outcomes highlight a debate between trustees and delegates, though the lack of objective superior outcomes in projects decided by vote as opposed to committee in the Afghanistan experiment indicate neither is superior to the other in determining which public goods should be given priority. Other research indicates that voters use elections to hold politicians accountable for the provision of public goods. In India, rural areas are charged a flat rate for electricity, but in the province of Uttar Pradesh, line loss—electricity that is consumed but not billed—is significantly higher in election years than non-election years, and increases in line loss reliably predict electoral gains. Voters rewarded incumbent politicians with a 12% increase in party seats in response to a 10% increase of unbilled electricity, in 2007 elections. In Ghana, the improvement of road conditions is linked to an increasing vote share for incumbent parties. Both of these research outcomes hinge on voters being able to attribute the service of public goods to politicians. Politicians may also have incentives to respond to pressure for public goods provision in electoral autocracies. There is evidence that as autocratic governments lose seats in their party's legislatures, they respond by increasing spending on public goods such as education, healthcare, and pensions. There is further evidence suggesting higher quality of life, civil liberties, and human development in electoral autocracies, lending credence to the theory that autocratic rulers use elections as a bellwether against popular discontent and citizen opposition, and in turn increase public goods provision to dampen the grievances of disgruntled citizens, even in non-democracies. While the introduction of elections is generally thought to improve public goods provision, in some cases, researchers have shown that it may reduce its quality. For example, the introduction of direct elections for local district office in Indonesia resulted in political interference in the hiring process for bureaucrats in the public education sector, reducing the quality of education provision; politicians were incentivized to dole out patronage positions in the education sector, especially in election years, and where such positions were added, student test scores were lower.
== Non-electoral == Governments are held accountable if citizens can punish or reward the government to influence it to pursue their best interests. While scholars who study democratic theory emphasize the role of elections in ensuring accountability, another strand of scholars investigates non-electoral forms of accountability in democracies and non-democracies and the conditions that make unelected leaders represent the interests of the general public.