Social Science Job Candidate

When do incumbents escape electoral punishment for bad policy outcomes? I propose that voters recognize when external factors limit politicians' ability to control a given outcome. Voters then ignore that outcome at the ballot box|giving politicians license to ignore it, too. I formalize this intuition and then nd empirical evidence for it in the context of violent crime in Latin America, where criminal homicide has made some democracies more deadly than contemporary Iraq. Using an original data set, I show that the intensi cation of counternarcotics operations in Colombia increased drug tra cking and violence in neighboring Venezuela, as criminal organizations moved across the border. I then nd that voter behavior changed as the in uence of events in Colombia strengthened. Prior to the Colombian crackdown, Venezuelan voters punished (or rewarded) political incumbents for changes in local homicide incidence. Yet during the Colombian crackdown, voters largely stopped responding to homicide outcomes, instead reelecting incumbents even as homicide rates soared.

Paper can be found at:  http://dorothykronick.com/wp-content/uploads/ViolenciaVoto_New.pdf