Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T04:31:14.019Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Incumbent Party Reelection in Australia, Canada, and the United States: An Exponential Decay Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2022

Richard J. Heggen
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico, USA
Alfred G. Cuzán
Affiliation:
University of West Florida, USA

Abstract

Exponential functions, widely used in the physical sciences, also have been used to model political phenomena. To our knowledge, however, this tool has not been used to replicate the electoral survival of the government or administration in several democracies. This article reports that an exponential survival model is a good fit for the reelection rate of the party that controls the executive office in states, territories, or provinces in three countries: Australia, Canada, and the United States.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors’ previous collaborations yielded a micropolitical model of socially efficient governments and a fiscal model of US presidential and UK parliamentary elections.

References

REFERENCES

Arbesman, Samuel. 2011. “The Life Spans of Empires.” Historical Methods 44 (3): 127–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Browne, Eric C., Frendreis, John P., and Gleiber, Dennis W.. 1986. “The Process of Cabinet Dissolution: An Exponential Model of Duration and Stability in Western Democracies.” American Journal of Political Science 30 (3): 628–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio. 1984. “The Political Reliability of Italian Governments: An Exponential Survival Model.” American Political Science Review 78 (2): 318–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cuzán, Alfred G. 2022. Laws of Politics: Their Operations in Democracies and Dictatorships. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Heggen, Richard J., and Cuzán, Alfred G.. 2022. “Replication Data for ‘Incumbent Party Reelection in Australia, Canada, and the United States: An Exponential Decay Model.’” Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/LQUXL1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Gary, Alt, James E., Burns, Nancy Elizabeth, and Laver, Michael. 1990. “A Unified Model of Cabinet Dissolution in Parliamentary Democracies.” American Journal of Political Science 34 (3): 846–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laver, Michael. 2003. “Government Termination.” Annual Review of Political Science 6:2340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somer-Topcu, Zeynep, and Williams, Laron K.. 2008. “Survival of the Fittest? Cabinet Duration in Postcommunist Europe.” Comparative Politics 40 (3): 313–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Heggen and Cuzán Dataset

Link