governance. Like corruption, the relevance of bad governance
can be exacerbated by economic decline if voters see
a link between good governance and economic growth, and
consider the former a cause of the latter. However, it is
debatable whether voters would close their eyes in front of
bad governance if there is economic growth. Unlike corruption,
overall bad governance affects a larger range of
aspects of citizens' lives, thus economic growth should be
less of a moderator of the government's overall performance.
The economy may be the key to assure popular
support, but voters are unlikely to enjoy it if the institutions
and governance mechanisms are underperforming. Hence,
incumbents receive voters' appreciation for economic performance,
but they are punished for the difficulties and
drawbacks that citizens encounter when interacting with
political and public institutions.
Bad governance could also reduce the salience of economic
performance by drawing people's attention away
from the economy. As Singer argues, governance crises
make people less likely to base their voting decision on the
state of the economy (Singer, 2011b) and even during a
recession a significant part of the electorate base their vote
on non-economic issues (Singer, 2011a). The connection
between good governance and the economy can be illustrated
in four different scenarios: when both are in crisis,
when either one or the other is badly affected, and when
both are in good shape. Given that previous studies assume
a stronger punishment for both bad governance and economic
recession, I define a as the threshold for an economic
crisis and b as the threshold for a governance crisis:
1. economic growthb:
considering that ”the economy is always an important
issue to voters” (Wlezien, 2005, 556), I expect economic
growth to have the main role in election outcomes.