Publication:
Endogenous Benchmarking and Government Accountability: Experimental Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorBecher, Michael
dc.contributor.authorBrouard, Sylvain
dc.contributor.authorStegmueller, Daniel
dc.contributor.authorBecher, Michael
dc.contributor.funderDuke University
dc.contributor.funderCollege of Natural Resources and Sciences
dc.contributor.funderHumboldt State University
dc.contributor.funderAgence Nationale de la Recherche
dc.contributor.funderNational Research Foundation of Korea
dc.contributor.rorhttps://ror.org/02jjdwm75
dc.date.accessioned2024-07-08T13:14:58Z
dc.date.available2024-07-08T13:14:58Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.description.abstractWhen do cross-national comparisons enable citizens to hold governments accountable? According to recent work in comparative politics,benchmarking across borders is a powerful mechanism for making elections work. However,little attention has been paid to the choice of benchmarks and how they shape democratic accountability. We extend existing theories to account for endogenous benchmarking. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a test case,we embedded experiments capturing self-selection and exogenous exposure to benchmark information from representative surveys in France,Germany,and the UK. The experiments reveal that when individuals have the choice,they are likely to seek out congruent information in line with their prior view of the government. Moreover,going beyond existing experiments on motivated reasoning and biased information choice,endogenous benchmarking occurs in all three countries despite the absence of partisan labels. Altogether,our results suggest that endogenous benchmarking weakens the democratic benefits of comparisons across borders. © 2024 Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.
dc.description.fundingtypeBecher acknowledges financial support from IE University and IAST funding from the French National Research Agency (ANR) under the Investments for the Future (Investissements d'Avenir) programme, grant ANR-17-EURE-0010. Sylvain Brouard acknowledges the financial support from ANR–REPEAT grant (Special COVID-19) CNRS, Fondation de l'innovation politique, as well as regions Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie. Stegmueller acknowledges funding from Duke University and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A3A2066657).
dc.description.keywordaccountability
dc.description.keywordbenchmarking
dc.description.keywordblame attribution
dc.description.keywordCOVID-19
dc.description.keywordinformation choice
dc.description.keywordmotivated reasoning
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.citationBecher, M., Brouard, S., & Stegmueller, D. (2024). Endogenous benchmarking and government accountability: Experimental evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic. British Journal of Political Science, 54(2), 355-372.
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123423000170
dc.identifier.issn71234
dc.identifier.officialurlhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85163744334&doi=10.1017%2fS0007123423000170&partnerID=40&md5=5636691c3f021f08a5295d94b4e544e9
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3109
dc.issue.number2
dc.journal.titleBritish Journal of Political Science
dc.language.isoeng
dc.page.final372
dc.page.initial355
dc.publisherCambridge University Press
dc.relation.departmentComparative Politics
dc.relation.entityIE University
dc.relation.projectID ANR: ANR-17-EURE-0010
dc.relation.projectID NRF: NRF-2017S1A3A2066657
dc.relation.schoolIE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
dc.rights.accessRightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectaccountability; benchmarking; blame attribution; COVID-19; information choice; motivated reasoning
dc.subject.keywordaccountability
dc.subject.keywordbenchmarking
dc.subject.keywordblame attribution
dc.subject.keywordCOVID-19
dc.subject.keywordinformation choice
dc.subject.keywordmotivated reasoning
dc.titleEndogenous Benchmarking and Government Accountability: Experimental Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
dc.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.version.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dc.volume.number54
dspace.entity.typePublication
person.identifier.scopus-author-id35182442500
person.identifier.scopus-author-id26867515100
person.identifier.scopus-author-id52364885600
relation.isAuthorOfPublication64459ea7-0faa-4600-9041-a4f317ab9579
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery64459ea7-0faa-4600-9041-a4f317ab9579
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Endogenous Benchmarking and Government Accountability Experimental Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic.pdf
Size:
371.49 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
Collections
Research Articles