Local accountability : the role of attribution, institutions, and communication

How do people hold local governments accountable? My dissertation shows how cognitive and perceptual biases, as well as electoral institutions and strategic communication, can hinder voters' ability to hold government accountable. I gather data on local politics -- a level of government that people interact with on a daily basis, and one that encompasses the vast majority of elected officials and elections in the United States. My evidence comes from large-scale elections and communications data, surveys, and partnerships with governments and service providers. My findings indicate that widespread confusion around government responsibilities and a cognitive bias favoring recent information shape how voters evaluate government for performance, that election timing can prevent voters from effectively holding their incumbent politicians accountable, and that strategic communication by municipal governments can further bias the balance of information that citizens rely on to judge government. Together, these papers demonstrate how three facets of politics can frustrate accountability in cities. This work contributes to theoretical knowledge on political behavior and political institutions, as well as the urban politics literature, and does so using three independent sources of data that provide fertile ground for future extensions of this work.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• De Benedictis-Kessner, Justin

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Adam J. Berinsky.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113491

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/113491