Work

All Politics is Local? Evidence of Local Council Incumbency Advantage in National Elections

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: We argue that the growing devolution of power to local authorities in European countries in the past four decades or so should lead to a growing influence of local politics and politicians in national politics. Specifically, we claim an incumbency effect across difference levels of politics, whereby parties that control a majority of seats in local councils have an advantage in national elections. To test this claim we employ an original dataset of 62 national elections results from 15 European countries at locality level and pair it with data on previous local elections. To overcome endogeneity issues, we employ a regression discontinuity design in which we focus on parties that barely win or barely miss a majority of seats in local councils. The estimated local effect gives incumbent parties an advantage of roughly one percentage point. This local council advantage benefit primarily parties that are not in national government.

Source: Comparative Political Studies

DOI: 10.1177/00104140251369321

Author: Emanuel Coman

Institution: Trinity College Dublin

Language: English

Topic: Electoral Systems and Political Participation

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,900