The Effect of Institutional Design and Voter Reasons on the Prevalence of Local Recall Elections

<p>Attempts to remove an elected official from office prior to the end of his or her term occur much more frequently at the local level than any other government level in the United States, signaling an important manifestation of voter perceptions of elected official representation and accountability. A state’s institutional design for the activation and operation of the recall device and a proponent’s stated rationale are reasoned to be significant factors in explaining the frequency of recalls at the local level. Twenty-three states permit the recall of local elected officials applicable on a statewide basis, which provide for an extensive sample of over 2,000 attempted recall observations from 2009 to 2022, serving as the basis for this research. I have created a unique and novel index to score each state’s collective institutional recall rules on a scale of 1-100, with lower values more facilitative of recalls and higher values more obstructive of a voter’s ability to initiate and qualify a recall. This index improves previous analyses of institutional design as it captures the combined impact of institutional rules and requisites on recall use and also the interaction of institutional design with proponents’ underlying reasons for initiating a recall attempt. I use OLS linear regression analysis and logistic regression analysis to test the effect of institutional rules on the prevalence of recall attempts in the United States in a more comprehensive and robust manner than previous research. Results indicate that institutional rules have a statistically significant effect on the likelihood of a recall attempt qualifying for the ballot (a 0.75% decrease per one unit increase in difficulty), but no effect on the number of attempts. I also perform logistic regression analysis to determine the effect of the underlying reasons for a recall, specifically policy-related and behavior-related reasons, on the likelihood that an attempt will qualify for the ballot and that the elected official will be successfully recalled. Results demonstrate that recalls initiated for reasons related to an elected official’s involvement in a scandal and/or negative behavior are 70% more likely than other reasons to be successful, ending in the removal of the elected official</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Political Science, PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Restricted to Claremont Colleges Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation

Year dc:date.available

2024

Author dc:creator

• Cervantez, Jennifer

Contributors dc:contributor

• Javier Rodriguez
• Carlos Algara

• Local elections
• Recall elections
• Linear regression
• Logistic regression
• Accountability
• Political Science
• Public Policy

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/855

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:cgu_etd-1877