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Electoral Accountability in the Midst of Criminal Violence: Evidence from Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Sandra Ley
Sandra Ley*
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas. [email protected]
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Abstract

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Rising levels of crime and insecurity affect the quality of life. A fundamental question for the prospects of democracy is whether voters, in hopes of reaching better solutions to conditions of prevailing insecurity, can hold their elected officials accountable for such situations. This article argues that electoral accountability amid criminal violence requires voters to be able to assign responsibility for crime, and that partisan alignment across levels of government facilitates this task. Recent Mexican elections are examined to test this argument. Relying on both aggregate electoral data and individual survey evidence, this study shows that voters hold politicians accountable for crime in the narrow circumstances of organized crime–related violence and political alignment. This evidence not only provides additional caveats to issue voting models, but also opens new avenues of research on electoral accountability.

Type
Research
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , Spring 2017 , pp. 3 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2017

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