Book Launch - Incumbency Bias: Why Political Office is a Blessing and Curse in Latin America
The conventional wisdom in political science is that incumbency provides politicians with a massive electoral advantage. This assumption has been challenged by the recent anti-incumbent cycle. When is incumbency a blessing for politicians and when is it a curse? Incumbency Bias offers a unified theory that argues that democratic institutions will make incumbency a blessing or curse by shaping the alignment between citizens' expectations of incumbent performance and incumbents' capacity to deliver. This argument is tested through a comparative investigation of incumbency bias in Brazil, Argentina and Chile that draws on extensive fieldwork and an impressive array of experimental and observational evidence. Incumbency Bias demonstrates that rather than clientelistic or corrupt elites compromising accountability, democracy can generate an uneven playing field if citizens demand good governance but have limited information. While focused on Latin America, this book carries broader lessons for understanding the electoral returns to office around the world.
Luis Schiumerini
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellow
Discussants:
Wendy Hunter
Professor of Political Science, University of Texas at Austin
Former Kellogg Institute Visiting Fellow
Kellogg Institute Advisory Board Member
Taylor Boas
Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies, Boston University
Department Chair
Former Kellogg Institute Visiting Fellow
Luis Schiumerini
Luis Schiumerini is an assistant professor of political science at Notre Dame, where he was a postdoctoral research associate with the Department of Political Science and a 2017-2018 Kellogg Institute Visiting Fellow. His research focuses on the political economy of citizenship in the developing world...
Wendy Hunter
Hunter, who is a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, was a Kellogg visiting fellow during the 2004–05 academic year. A Latin Americanist, her research includes in-depth study of the military in Brazil and the Southern Cone, as well as work on social policy issues in Latin America, with special attention to the politics of education and health reform...