Quintin H. Beazer
Assistant ProfessorDepartment of Political Science
Florida State University
email: qbeazer{at}fsu.edu
Does decentralization affect how voters attribute blame for poor economic performance? The question of whether political centralization ties regime leaders to local economic outcomes is particularly important in authoritarian regimes, where economic performance legitimacy is a key source of regime stability. Using political and economic data from large Russian cities for the period 2003-2012, we investigate how replacing direct mayoral elections with appointments affects the way voters attribute blame for economic outcomes. We find that the ruling party is more likely to be punished for poor economic performance in cities with appointed mayors than it is in cities with elected mayors. This research suggests that having locally-elected officials may help electoral authoritarian regimes deflect responsibility for some unfavorable outcomes.
How do firms' nonmarket activities affect their strategic market behavior, and how is this relationship affected by firms' institutional environment? We argue that when firms engage in the nonmarket activity of joining a business association, they are more willing to contract, i.e. engage in transactions involving non-simultaneous actions that are spread out over time. Business associations help mitigate contracting risks by increasing the availability of information about market actors and helping resolve contract disputes. Moreover, we expect this effect of business association membership on contracting to be strongest when judicial institutions fail to provide independent and effective enforcement of private contracts. Through quantitative analysis of firm survey data from the World Bank, we find that firms that are members of a business association are more likely to extend trade credit and outsource operations; however, this relationship holds primarily in contexts where judicial institutions lack autonomy and influence.
How do local elections under autocracy affect pro-poor policies? While theories of democratic accountability focus on electoral incentives' role in helping or hindering local-level governance, they tend to gloss over appointed leaders' political incentives. We argue that, in an electoral authoritarian regime, local appointees have political incentives that undermine public service provision; regime leaders' preoccupation with securing electoral control encourages them to overlook local governance problems so long as subnational officials can still deliver the requisite votes. Using geographic and temporal variation in the cancellation of mayoral elections in Russian cities (2003-2012), we investigate how mayoral appointments affect the condition of low-quality, Soviet-era housing maintained by local governments. We find that, compared to elected mayors, appointed mayors allow more of their aging housing stock to become dilapidated and unsafe. Consistent with our argument, we find that dilapidated housing stock increases more in cities where appointees can deliver high vote shares to the ruling party in national elections. This suggests that fulfilling core regime political goals leaves appointed officials less attentive to local conditions.
How do governments use propaganda to deal with poor economic performance? Given the economy's important role in shoring up regime legitimacy, governments have an incentive to influence public discourse and shape citizens' perceptions about economic performance, especially during periods of economic decline or crisis. Existing research demonstrates that states' information campaigns can sometimes successfully frame issues and alter attitudes, yet we know very little about which framing tactics regimes adopt to shape economic evaluations or the conditions under different frames are employed. In this paper, we analyze 14 years of nightly news broadcasts from a state-controlled television station in Russia, Channel One, to examine how pro-governmental coverage of economic news changes in response to souring economic conditions.
Published research is listed here.
