Crises and Electoral Accountability: How Do Individual Characteristics of Crises Affect Performance and Responsibility Evaluations among Voters?

Abstract How do voters react to the individual characteristics of crises following events such as pandemics or floods? In the aftermath of crises following such events, governments may find they are sanctioned by voters, because the crises can provide voters with important information concerning the qualities of incumbents in handling crisis or their responsibility for the ensuing hardships. However, existing research provides limited evidence concerning the characteristics of crises that voters rely on to evaluate the government’s responsibility for or performance in handling them. The present article addresses this gap by providing evidence obtained from a conjoint experiment conducted among British voters. The results show that when voters sanction governments following a crisis, they focus overwhelmingly on the government’s perceived crisis management performance. Voter perceptions of crisis management performance are driven by the severity of the crisis, prevention and relief spending, as well as the behaviour of the political elites. In contrast, voter perceptions of government responsibility for the crisis are affected less strongly by crisis characteristics, such as crisis severity, prevention spending and expert statements.