Constitutional rules, early elections and accountability

Over the last 20 years, political scientists have established the central role that the constitutional rules governing early election calling play in democratic governance, identifying the effects of these institutional rules on key democratic processes. These include the timing of elections (Kayser Reference Kayser2005; Smith Reference Smith2004, Strøm and Swindle Reference Strøm and Swindle2002), the making and breaking of governments (Schleiter and Morgan-Jones Reference Schleiter and Morgan-Jones2009), incumbent electoral success (Schleiter and Tavits Reference Schleiter and Tavits2016), the economic consequences of early election calling (Smith Reference Smith2004) and the ability of the executive to achieve its legislative and public policy goals (Becher and Christiansen Reference Becher and Christiansen2015). Thus, in the context of such observed effects, it is not unreasonable to expect meaningful differences in how citizens view these changes in governance processes when incumbents can call elections freely compared with those in which they cannot. Yet, despite clear implications in the literature about the way that citizens experience and thus evaluate the performance of democracy, there is a gap in our empirical knowledge in how the differences in the early elections capabilities potentially impact citizens' attitudes towards democracy.

A parallel gap in the literature on citizen satisfaction with democracy has also emerged. This has emphasized that citizen experience of democracy is mediated by institutions (Aarts and Thomassen Reference Aarts and Thomassen2008; Anderson and Guillory Reference Anderson and Guillory1997; Rohrschneider Reference Rohrschneider1999, Reference Rohrschneider2005). The main set of institutions that this literature has focused upon is electoral and party systems as well as government capacity to respond to citizen demands (Wagner et al. Reference Wagner, Schneider and Halla2009), primarily because of effects these institutions are thought to have on citizens' experience of representation and accountability. If, as Max Goplerud and Petra Schleiter argue, ‘the political consequences of constitutional powers to call early elections … may be comparable with those of electoral rules’ because they ‘condition electoral accountability, incumbency advantages, governments, and policy’ (Goplerud and Schleiter Reference Goplerud and Schleiter2016: 428), this motivates a similar investigation into how constitutional rules shape citizens' perceptions of the quality of their democracy experiences. A natural question arising for the democratic satisfaction literature is therefore, do parliamentary dissolution powers shape citizen satisfaction with democracy? In the next section of the article, we ask whether these constitutional differences in the rules governing early election calling have the potential to shape citizens' evaluations of democratic quality, and if so, how?

Constitutional rules and citizens' perceptions of democratic quality

Below we develop theoretical arguments about the link between the rules governing early election calling and citizens' evaluation of democratic quality. To develop the theoretical links between constitutional rules governing early election calling and citizen satisfaction with democracy we build on two sets of work with different focuses. The first set of work we discuss considers the systematic effects of rules governing early elections and their effects on democratic governance, with implications for democratic quality. This set of literature identifies long-term effects that the rules on early election might have on individual democratic satisfaction across polities with different constitutional rules. The second set of literature focuses on the short-term meaning and impact of calling early elections on citizens' evaluations of the incumbent, which may have implications for individual evaluations of democratic performance at the time when early elections are called.

We start our discussion with the literature that focuses on the macro-effects of different constitutional rules on democratic performance and accountability. This literature's key insight is that that differences in the constitutional rules governing early elections promote different patterns of election calling and government termination. These patterns result from incentives and constraints that these rules provide to politicians and have consequences for the quality of democratic government. Extending these arguments to the individual level implies that these consequences have the potential to shape different experiences of democracy which form individual orientations towards government (Aarts and Thomassen Reference Aarts and Thomassen2008; Anderson and Guillory Reference Anderson and Guillory1997; Rohrschneider Reference Rohrschneider1999, Reference Rohrschneider2005). The question that arises, though, is how precisely should these patterns of governance generated by different constitutional rules shape these experiences? There are contrasting logics implicit in the literature and we develop these into competing testable hypotheses in the discussion that follows.

The first argument we develop focuses on the possible accountability gap generated by constitutional rules granting prime ministers, cabinets and presidents discretion to call early elections. The ability to call early elections at a time that suits them creates the opportunity and incentive for prime ministers to dissolve parliament when they are likely to win and for presidents to time parliamentary elections when their allies may do well. Alastair Smith's (Reference Smith2004) important theoretical work highlights how incumbents have incentives to call early elections when they expect a downturn in policy performance and wish to bank current levels of support in the expectation of electoral support declining in the future. The empirical literature documents that that this is often a successful strategy. Incumbents receive an electoral bonus in votes, seats and the increased probability in prime ministerial survival in office as a result of carefully timing an election (Schleiter and Tavits Reference Schleiter and Tavits2016). The implication is that constitutional rules that permit the governments to call early elections will be used to increase incumbents' ability to secure advantageous electoral outcomes and as a result weaken the accountability link between politicians and citizens. This means, ‘[b]ecause leaders who can control election timing do not need to face the voters at fixed times … such incumbents may be able to affect how voters vote by controlling when they vote … and thereby affect (and sometimes distort) accountability’ (Schleiter and Tavits Reference Schleiter and Tavits2016: 837). Smith (Reference Smith2004), for instance, finds, in the case of the UK, economic performance declines after early elections, something that incumbents who win elections have avoided taking responsibility for by calling early elections. Extending the implications of this argument to the democratic experience of citizens suggests that the more that constitutions permit early and opportunistic election calling, the more likely it is that the incumbent's evasion of electoral accountability will decrease satisfaction with democracy for those anticipating the opportunity to penalize them in the subsequent election. This leads to the first expectation that we test in this article:

In contrast, the second argument we develop emphasizes that granting the prime minister or the cabinet the power to call early elections enhances the quality of democratic government. These arguments can be traced as far back as Walter Bagehot (Reference Bagehot1867), who noted the power of the rule both to facilitate the passage of legislation and encourage the government to attend to public opinion (Bagehot 1867/2001: 16 and 163–179). In more recent work, Michael Laver (Reference Laver, Weingast and Wittman2008) has argued that endogenous election timing, controlled by the executive, facilitates democratic responsiveness to changing (i.e. more favourable) public opinion, which has an impact on policymaking. This is because the power to threaten to call early elections gives the executive significant bargaining advantages in negotiations with the legislature ‘when the government is riding high in the polls and the parliamentary opposition fears an election, then the government's legislative business managers can adopt a “make my day” approach, staking the future of the administration on (quite possibly more extreme) legislative proposals’ (Laver Reference Laver, Weingast and Wittman2008: 124–125). Michael Becher and Flemming Juul Christiansen (Reference Becher and Christiansen2015) provide support to this argument, demonstrating that the conditions that shape the capacity of prime ministers to use the threat of early elections to extract policy concessions from parliament depends on their electoral popularity.

If granting early election calling powers to incumbents increases policy performance and government responsiveness, constraining early election calling may erode these attributes. Scholars of parliamentary government suggest that political manoeuvring in the assembly in the post-election period weakens the connection between governments and voters (Cheibub and Przeworski Reference Cheibub, Przeworski, Przeworski, Stokes and Manin1999; Mershon Reference Mershon2002; Maravall Reference Maravall2010). Restricting early election calling insulates politicians in parliament from the immediate threat of an election. In-between elections the legislature has discretion to select and remove cabinets and there is less need to be immediately responsive to the concerns of the electorate as they do so: ‘Elites may co-ordinate with one another in ways that voters and theorists alike find troubling … The spectacle of newly elected office holders switching parties can undermine voter confidence and the links that ensure democratic responsiveness’ (Powell Reference Powell2004: 98–99).

José Antonio Chiebub and Adam Przeworski (Reference Cheibub, Przeworski, Przeworski, Stokes and Manin1999) chart that nearly half of heads of government leave office without voters being asked to vote on their performance. They note that interparty disputes end almost two-thirds of all prime ministers' careers during the parliamentary term rather than at election time (Cheibub and Przeworski Reference Cheibub, Przeworski, Przeworski, Stokes and Manin1999: 236). José María Maravall argues it is precisely these kind of non-electoral government terminations that mean ‘that coalitions can limit the democratic accountability of governments’ (see also Hellwig and Samuels Reference Hellwig and Samuels2008: 70–71; Maravall Reference Maravall2010: 98). It is these replacement governments that will be more likely if dissolution is constrained (Schleiter and Morgan-Jones Reference Schleiter and Morgan-Jones2009).

The argument is that constrained dissolution increases the capacity of members of parliament to overturn cabinets because members of the legislature do not face the immediate threat of pre-term dissolution. As it is easier for governments to be removed in the inter-election term, the less likely it is that governments can be held accountable at election time for their actions taken earlier in the term. This in turn reduces the incentive that elections provide to govern in the interests of the electorate, increasing the chance that these rules will reduce the quality of democratic government. Thus, the effect of constitutional rules that constrain early election on increasing the rate of non-electoral replacements government may cause citizens to evaluate their experience of democracy negatively. In contrast, governments can be expected to be more responsive and policy effective when prime ministers and cabinets have discretion about when to dissolve the parliament, which should improve perceptions of democratic quality at the individual level compared with constrained dissolution. This leads us to our second hypothesis:

Thus, we have two competing arguments which are the direct inverse of each other about the effect of constitutional rules governing early election calling on citizen satisfaction with democracy.

A second set of literature enables us to develop insights that allow us to theorize about differences in the effect of calling early elections on citizen evaluations of incumbent performance, with implications for democratic quality at the time early elections are called. Whereas the previous discussion focused on expected differences between average levels of democratic satisfaction between countries with different constitutional rules, here we consider the short-run effects of early election calling compared to regular elections in countries with permissive early election calling rules (prime-ministerial initiated, presidentially controlled or agreed by the cabinet).

This literature starts from the observation that the act of calling early elections sends a signal to voters about incumbent quality (Smith Reference Smith2004), and this signal is negative. Smith argues that governments call early elections in economic good times because they anticipate a future decline in economic performance. Importantly the earlier the election is called in this argument the stronger the signal of negative outcomes. This negative signal causes citizens to update their perception of government performance, leading to a decline in incumbent electoral support. A range of evidence supports this argument. Smith (Reference Smith2004) provides evidence at the aggregate level in the UK that when early elections are called, incumbents lose support over the course of the campaign, though they usually win. André Blais et al. (Reference Blais, Gidengil, Nevitte and Nadeau2004) and Jean-François Daoust and Gabrielle Péloquin-Skulski (Reference Daoust and Péloquin-Skulski2021) provide individual-level observational evidence from Canada that a portion of voters punish incumbents more when elections are called early. Schleiter and Tavits (Reference Schleiter and Tavits2018) provide individual-level survey-experimental evidence that when incumbents call early elections that are perceived as an opportunistic unfair use of their powers, then voter support for incumbents declines. They find that although voters' concerns about electoral opportunism do have some electoral costs for the incumbents, consideration about ‘economic performance strongly dominates any concern about opportunism in structuring vote choice’ (Schleiter and Tavits Reference Schleiter and Tavits2018: 1193). This means we can expect opportunistic election calling to be a successful strategy for incumbents; yet it may be a strategy that makes, at least some, voters unhappy with the quality of democracy. Calling elections opportunistically then in this view can heighten voter perceptions of procedural unfairness, leading perceptions of democratic quality to decline.

This literature focuses entirely on the case of opportunistic early elections defined as elections procedurally triggered by incumbents to maximize chances of re-election, but early elections can also result from governance failure. Parliamentary dissolutions can be triggered either by opposition action (such as a no-confidence vote) or by the government calling an early election in response to governance failures such as ‘loss of support for the government's legislative program, loss of parliamentary confidence, withdraw of a coalition partner, resignation of the PM, or the imminent occurrence of any of these events’ (Schleiter and Tavits 2016: 842). Although voter responses to these types of early elections are comparatively understudied, it is reasonable to expect that voters will also become more democratically dissatisfied when elections are early, compared with regular elections. In addition, we can expect this dissatisfaction to be more prevalent when it is individual figures such as prime ministers or presidents who are responsible for these decisions as they will be seen to be acting in a more partisan way or associated more clearly with governance failure.

Finally, we can draw on Smith's arguments that the negative signal about incumbent expectations of future performance is stronger the earlier elections are called relative to expectations. ‘If elections are announced out of the blue – when other factors predict an election to be unlikely – then the timing decision indicates that the leader anticipates a drastic decline in future performance. Voters can use this new information to reassess their evaluation of the government’ (Smith Reference Smith2004: 5). If we assume that such out-of-the-blue early elections, signalling poor incumbent quality, are more likely earlier in the parliamentary term, then we might expect these elections to be related to lower levels of democratic satisfaction. These considerations lead to our final hypotheses:

This completes our theoretical discussion that identified our expectations for how constitutional rules governing early election calling may shape democratic satisfaction across polities in different ways and suggesting democratic satisfaction will decline specifically after early elections called by prime ministers and presidents, and those called earlier in the parliamentary term.

Data, measurement and methods

In order to test the theory as set out in this article, we use every wave of the ESS from 2002 to 2016 (Rounds 1–8). This allows us to control for the theorized determinants of satisfaction with democracy at the individual level. We merged these data with information on constitutional rules on early election calling, including when early elections were called. Using the Comparative Political Data Set (Armingeon et al. Reference Armingeon, Wenger, Wiedemeier, Isler, Knöpfel, Weisstanner and Engler2018), we identify the winners and losers of each election and include a control variable for the effective number of parties. We additionally include yearly data from the World Bank for GDP per capita growth, unemployment and inflation, as well as the Gini Index of income inequality (Solt Reference Solt2019). We included an additive variable for government performance from the World Governance Indicators. Finally, we added an age of democracy (from 2016) and dummy variables for both semi-presidentialism and post-communism. A full description of all variables and measurements can be found in the Online Appendix.

For the dependent variable – satisfaction with democracy – we use the survey question, ‘And on the whole, how satisfied are you with the way democracy works in [country]?’ (Anderson Reference Anderson2005). For the sample used here: range 0–10; mean: 5.59; std dev.: 2.41; N = 161,694. Citizens' satisfaction with democracy is an important measure of national-level democracy. While some have argued that citizens' satisfaction with democracy problematically takes on several facets of the relationship between citizens and government (also Canache et al. Reference Canache, Mondak and Seligson2001; Linde and Ekman Reference Linde and Ekman2003), Christopher Anderson (Reference Anderson2005) emphasizes how citizens' orientations to and subsequent evaluations of their (own) democracy must correspond to what they consider to be ‘democratic’ (Easton Reference Easton1975). This includes, in Estonian language, both diffuse (what an object is or represents) and specific (what a system produces) support. The former is the generic and positive orientation to the democratic process (e.g. ‘I like democracy’), whereas specific support is an ‘experiential’, performance assessment (e.g. ‘I like my democracy’). Both are meaningful and very often correlated and, as Anderson points out, ‘the object of a citizen's support does not have to be – and probably cannot be – reliably separated in terms of the system and the system's outputs’ (Reference Anderson2005: 4). Thus, our use of ‘citizens’ own assessments of their democracy as a measuring rod’ (Powell Reference Powell2004: 102) is appropriate as an assessment of the performance of democracy.

Our main (independent) variable of interest requires us to code constitutions with respect to the degree that they permit or constrain early parliamentary dissolution and the main actors that have some say over this decision. To measure the constitutional rules governing early election calling we follow Petra Schleiter and Edward Morgan-Jones's (Reference Schleiter and Morgan-Jones2009) typology, which classifies countries according to the extent that the constitutionally dominant actor in early election calling is either the prime minister, the cabinet or the president – or if early election calling is constrained.Footnote ¹ It is important to point out that parliamentary dissolutions are part of constitutions generally chosen when counties democratize and supermajority requirements make these rules extremely difficult to change (the UK is an exception). It is therefore reasonable to regard these rules as exogenously determined.

Table 1 provides an overview of the countries in our sample and the rules under which they are governed. In Tables 2 and 3 we also provide descriptive information about the relationship of these rules to patterns of government early election calling and cabinet termination. In the data that we use, early elections are counted purely in terms of the number of days before constitutionally mandated elections are expected to be held. These elections vary between 40 and 1,253 days before the month in which next election could expect to be scheduled according to the constitutional requirements that limit the parliament's term. A median early election falling 12.1 months before the next regular election could expect to be scheduled (mean: 14.2; std dev. = 11.5). Opportunistic elections are coded as such when ‘they are (i) triggered by the incumbent government and (ii) there is evidence of opportunism by the incumbent, defined as capitalizing on public opinion support, strong performance of the government, or opposition weakness (unpopularity, divisions, leaderlessness)’ (Schleiter and Tavits Reference Schleiter and Tavits2016: 840).

Table 1. Countries and Constitutional Rules

Table 2. Constitutional Rules and Early Elections

Sources: Schleiter and Morgan-Jones (Reference Schleiter and Morgan-Jones2009), augmented using Andersson et al. (Reference Andersson, Bergman and Ersson2012); the European Representative Democracy Data Archive (www.erdda.se); Keesings; and the EJPR Political Data Yearbook.

Table 3. Constitutional Rules and Discretionary Government Terminations

Sources: Schleiter and Morgan-Jones (Reference Schleiter and Morgan-Jones2009), augmented using Andersson et al. (Reference Andersson, Bergman and Ersson2012); the European Representative Democracy Data Archive (www.erdda.se); Keesings; and the EJPR Political Data Yearbook.

Note that both early elections and opportunistic elections are anticipated much more frequently under constitutional rules, where prime ministers can time elections, and non-electoral replacements much less frequently (columns 4 and 5 in Table 2).Footnote ² The table also displays data demonstrating that when early election calling is constrained, the numbers of both early elections and opportunistic elections are much lower and also the rate of non-electoral replacement is much higher (compare results along columns 3 and 4, Table 3). These data serve to confirm that there is a potential link between the constitutional rules and patterns of early election calling.

The standard model for individuals' satisfaction with democracy is a multilevel model with both individual- and macro-level variables playing important roles in determining individual satisfaction levels. To address the wide range of control variables that the existing literature identifies as significant correlates of democratic satisfaction we include measures for the following concepts. For ‘experiences with democratic institutions’ (Rohrschneider Reference Rohrschneider1999, Reference Rohrschneider2005), we use an additive indicator of the number of ‘democratic activities’, including saying ‘yes’ to contacting a politician or government official in the previous 12 months; working in a political party or action group in the previous 12 months; working in another organization or association in the previous 12 months; wearing or displaying a campaign badge/sticker in the previous 12 months; signing petitions in the previous 12 months; or taking part in a lawful public demonstration in the previous 12 months (N = 6; α: 0.630). For ‘outputs of democratic institutions’ such as their capacity for managing both the national economy and its effects on personal economic conditions (also Anderson Reference Anderson1998; Finkel et al. Reference Finkel, Muller and Seligson1989; Lewis-Beck Reference Lewis-Beck1986; Listhaug and Wiberg Reference Listhaug, Wiberg, Klingemann and Fuchs1995; Wagner et al. Reference Wagner, Schneider and Halla2009) and for ‘the problem-solving capabilities of democracy’ (Sarsfield and Echegaray Reference Sarsfield and Echegaray2006: 169), we use the question, ‘On the whole how satisfied are you with the present state of the economy in [country]?’Footnote ³

For ‘winners and losers’ (Anderson and Guillory Reference Anderson and Guillory1997; see also Blais and Gélineau Reference Blais and Gélineau2007; Singh et al. Reference Singh, Karakoc and Blais2012), we matched individuals' most recent vote with the current party composition in government (Comparative Political Data Set – CPDS). Winners are those who voted for parties in the governing coalition, losers were those who voted, but not for winning parties. We also keep with the literature by including ‘ideological’ winners (also referred to as ‘quasi-winners’). These are voters who did not vote for a winning party but have ideological proximity to the current government. Matching these provides some ideological congruence between voters and current government composition as well as policy positions (Kim Reference Kim2009). Individuals' self-reported ideological positions were grouped into three categories (0–3: left; 4–6: centre; 7–10: right) and matched to CPDS: (1) ‘Government position: “Hegemony of left parties” and “Dominance of left parties”’; (2) ‘Balance of power between left and right’; and (3) ‘Dominance of right/centre parties’ and ‘Hegemony of right/centre parties’.

We include measures for consensual v. majoritarian systems; age of democracy; political institutions' capabilities; as well as dummies for both post-communism and semi-presidentialism. For the perception of ‘representativeness’ in consensual systems and ‘accountability’ in majoritarian systems (Aarts and Thomassen Reference Aarts and Thomassen2008; Anderson and Guillory Reference Anderson and Guillory1997), according to the theory, the proportionality of the electoral system should affect the identifiability and representative of governments and therefore perceptions of representation and accountability that feed into satisfaction with democracy. As a measure of the variation between consensual v. majoritarian systems, we include a measure of the effective number of parties (Laakso and Taagepera Reference Laakso and Taagepera1979).

To account for cross-national variation, we include determinants of variation in satisfaction with democracy at the macro-level model. The model is a random intercept/fixed slope model. Individual-level variation is fixed across countries (i.e. slopes are not allowed to vary across countries) but country means are allowed to vary cross-nationally by the included macro-level variables. We do not consider the case in which macro-level variation may shape cross-national variation of individual-level variables as there is no theoretical impetus at this stage to do so. The variables specifically theorized to impact satisfaction with democracy are included in Level 1.