Democracy works when citizens can hold policy makers to accounts. Nowhere is this connection between the governed and their representatives more evident than the economy. Citizens expect strong economic performance from incumbents, and executives who fail to live up to popular expectations will feel the voter’s wrath at election time. But what if the criterion on which governments are judged—the economy—is fundamentally restructured? Such is the case in times of structural reform. Structural reforms change the way citizens evaluate politicians. We argue that by changing popular orientations toward the economy and beliefs about how it works, policy maker decisions to follow a neoliberal or, alternatively, a statist approach to growth and stability transforms the reward-punishment expectation lying at the heart of models of political accountability. The argument is tested on models of popular approval for presidents in Latin America using newly-assembled datasets on presidential approval, economic evaluations, and policy reform. Results highlight the extent to which the president’s goal of economic stability is at odds with their public standing.

A draft of the paper is available to download.

Tim Hellwig is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute for European Studies at Indiana University. His interests are in comparative political economy, political behaviour, European politics, and research methods. He is author of Globalization and Mass Politics: Retaining the Room to Maneuver (Cambridge University Press). His work appears in several journals and book chapters, including the American Journal of Political Science, the British Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. He holds a BA from St. Cloud State University, an MA from American University, and a PhD from the University of Minnesota. He has been a researcher at the International Foundation for Election Systems, on the faculty at the University of Houston, and a visiting researcher at the Australian National University, Gothenburg University, and the University of Essex. Professor Hellwig teaches courses on comparative political economy, comparative elections, European politics, public policy, and quantitative methods.