Journal Articles

Increasing rents and incumbency disadvantage

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Recent empirical studies have found a incumbency disadvantage in many developing
democracies, in marked contrast with the well-known incumbency advantage in the US and other
developed democracies. We know considerably less about incumbency disadvantage than
incumbency advantage. In a simple principal-agent framework, I explore the role of a prominent
feature of developing democracies – corruption. When rents are constant in incumbents’ tenure –
a standard assumption – the conditions for incumbency disadvantage are existent but limited;
however, increasing rents, possibly due to learning, a gradual build-up of rent-extraction
networks or fiscal windfalls, considerably increase the possibility of incumbency disadvantage,
because voters may prefer inexperienced and unconnected challengers, even if they are of lower
quality. Incumbency disadvantage becomes more likely as the pace of rent increase grows,
politician quality decreases, with noise in the policy outcome, and potentially even when the pool
of politicians improves. It is strictly more costly than any electoral outcome with high but
constant-rents. The results highlight a novel reason for control of corruption and sensitivity to its
dynamics.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Journal of Theoretical Politics

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications., 2016

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0951-6298

Classification

NONE

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2016; pp. 225–265

Subject(s)

Corruption
Incumbency
Rent-seeking
political agency

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

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