Daring to Fail: Input-Oriented Voting under Supranational Policy Constraints

Abstract

Recent literature argues that with ever-increasing levels of supranational constraints governments haveless ‘room to manoeuvre’; therefore, voters will place less weight on policy outcomes in their voting decisions. Thequestion that remains less explored is how voters fill this accountability gap. We argue that, in this context, votersmay move away from outcome- to input-oriented voting. Fulfilling their promises becomes less vital for incumbentsas long as they exhibit effort to overturn an unpopular policy framework. We test this argument against a surveyexperiment conducted in the run-up to the September 2015 election in Greece, where we find a positive impact ofthe incumbent’s exerted effort to challenge the status quo of austerity on vote intention for SYRIZA – the seniorcoalition government partner at the time – despite the failed outcome of the government’s bailout negotiations