Abstract
Social capital has been shown to positively influence government performance. Boix and Posner (Br. J. Polit. Sci. 28:686–693, 1998) suggest a possible explanation: social capital makes citizens monitor the government more closely. Such monitoring will be more explicit to the extent that instrumental voting motivations outweigh expressive considerations. We identify social capital as a source that facilitates instrumental voting and thus political accountability. We present an empirical test of the Boix and Posner hypothesis and find a positive link between perceived quality of government and election results of the incumbent parties. Crucially, we find this link to be stronger in municipalities high in social capital.
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Jottier, D., Heyndels, B. Does social capital increase political accountability? An empirical test for Flemish municipalities. Public Choice 150, 731–744 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-010-9727-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-010-9727-1