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Replication Data for: Executive Accountability Beyond Outcomes: Experimental Evidence on Public Evaluations of Powerful Prime Ministers

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: Executive Accountability Beyond Outcomes: Experimental Evidence on Public Evaluations of Powerful Prime Ministers
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/B9JAV0
 
Creator Becher, Michael
Brouard, Sylvain
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description While executives in many democracies have constitutional powers to circumvent the majoritarian legislative process to make policy, political scientists know relatively little about whether and when ordinary people hold executives accountable for the process they use. To study this issue beyond the American presidency, we conduct a series of large survey experiments in France, where the institution of the confidence procedure puts the government in a strong position relative to parliament. Our experiments highlight that public evaluations of the executive reflect a fundamental trade-off between policy and process. If they face significant opposition in the legislative process, executives either have to accept policy failure or risk punishment for the use of procedural force. People dislike both results, and the average popularity gain of using the confidence procedure over not delivering the policy is modest. Moreover, in some contexts executives are strictly better off not legislating rather than applying force.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Executive power
Confidence vote procedure
Accountability
Public opinion
Experiments
 
Contributor Becher, Michael
 
Source Martial Foucault. "L'enquête électorale française 2017."[French National Election Study 2017] Distributed by CEVIPOF at Sciences Po, Paris. Email: martial.foucault@sciencespo.fr



Sylvain Brouard and Michael Becher. "DEMOREG Regional democracy survey excluding participants of French Election Study (ENEF)." August 6, 2019. CEVIPOF, Sciences Po, Paris.