Do opportunistic snap elections affect political trust? Evidence from a natural experiment
Do opportunistic snap elections affect political trust? Evidence from a natural experiment
Snap elections, those triggered by incumbents in advance of their original date in the electoral calendar, are a common feature of parliamentary democracies. In this paper, I ask: do snap elections influence citizens’ trust in the government? Theoretically, I argue that providing citizens with an additional means of endorsing or rejecting the incumbent – giving voters a chance to ‘have their say’ – can be interpreted by citizens as normatively desirable and demonstrative of the incumbent's desire to legitimise their agenda by (re)-invigorating their political mandate. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting provided by the coincidental timing of the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May's, shock announcement of early elections in April 2017 with the fieldwork for the Eurobarometer survey, I demonstrate that the announcement of snap elections had a sizeable and significant positive effect on political trust. This trust-inducing effect is at odds with the observed electoral consequences of the 2017 snap elections. Whilst incumbent-triggered elections can facilitate net gains for the sitting government, May's 2017 gamble cost the Conservative Party their majority. Snap elections did increase political trust. These trust-inducing effects were not observed symmetrically for all citizens. Whilst Eurosceptics and voters on the right of the ideological spectrum – those most inclined to support the incumbent May-led Conservative government in 2017 – became more trusting, no such changes in trust were observed amongst left-wing or non-Eurosceptic respondents. This study advances the understanding of a relatively understudied yet not uncommon political phenomenon, providing causal evidence that snap elections have implications for political trust.
Britain, United Kingdom, early elections, incumbent opportunism, political trust, quasi-experiment
308-325
Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J.
e25c6280-842c-407f-a961-6472eea5d845
February 2023
Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J.
e25c6280-842c-407f-a961-6472eea5d845
Turnbull-Dugarte, Stuart J.
(2023)
Do opportunistic snap elections affect political trust? Evidence from a natural experiment.
European Journal of Political Research, 62 (1), .
(doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12531).
Abstract
Snap elections, those triggered by incumbents in advance of their original date in the electoral calendar, are a common feature of parliamentary democracies. In this paper, I ask: do snap elections influence citizens’ trust in the government? Theoretically, I argue that providing citizens with an additional means of endorsing or rejecting the incumbent – giving voters a chance to ‘have their say’ – can be interpreted by citizens as normatively desirable and demonstrative of the incumbent's desire to legitimise their agenda by (re)-invigorating their political mandate. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting provided by the coincidental timing of the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May's, shock announcement of early elections in April 2017 with the fieldwork for the Eurobarometer survey, I demonstrate that the announcement of snap elections had a sizeable and significant positive effect on political trust. This trust-inducing effect is at odds with the observed electoral consequences of the 2017 snap elections. Whilst incumbent-triggered elections can facilitate net gains for the sitting government, May's 2017 gamble cost the Conservative Party their majority. Snap elections did increase political trust. These trust-inducing effects were not observed symmetrically for all citizens. Whilst Eurosceptics and voters on the right of the ideological spectrum – those most inclined to support the incumbent May-led Conservative government in 2017 – became more trusting, no such changes in trust were observed amongst left-wing or non-Eurosceptic respondents. This study advances the understanding of a relatively understudied yet not uncommon political phenomenon, providing causal evidence that snap elections have implications for political trust.
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More information
Accepted/In Press date: 8 February 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 26 April 2022
Published date: February 2023
Additional Information:
I am very grateful to members of the TrustGov team at the University of Southampton, in particular, Viktor Valgarðsson and Will Jennings, for the critical feedback on earlier iterations of the paper. Earlier drafts also received helpful comments from José Rama and Jean-François Daoust. I am indebted to the four anonymous reviewers and the handling editor for their recommendations.
Keywords:
Britain, United Kingdom, early elections, incumbent opportunism, political trust, quasi-experiment
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 467938
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/467938
ISSN: 0304-4130
PURE UUID: 34d4ba4c-f08a-41f4-a572-1b1e03e73856
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Date deposited: 26 Jul 2022 16:36
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:01
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