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Motivated Reasoning and Democratic Accountability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2021

ANDREW T. LITTLE Open the ORCID record for ANDREW T. LITTLE [Opens in a new window] ,
KEITH E. SCHNAKENBERG Open the ORCID record for KEITH E. SCHNAKENBERG [Opens in a new window]  and
IAN R. TURNER Open the ORCID record for IAN R. TURNER [Opens in a new window]
ANDREW T. LITTLE*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley, United States
KEITH E. SCHNAKENBERG*
Affiliation:
Washington University in St. Louis, United States
IAN R. TURNER*
Affiliation:
Yale University, United States
*
Andrew T. Little, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, United States, andrew.little@berkeley.edu.
Keith E. Schnakenberg, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, United States, keschnak@wustl.edu.
Ian R. Turner, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Yale University, United States, ian.turner@yale.edu.
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Abstract

Does motivated reasoning harm democratic accountability? Substantial evidence from political behavior research indicates that voters have “directional motives” beyond accuracy, which is often taken as evidence that they are ill equipped to hold politicians accountable. We develop a model of electoral accountability with voters as motivated reasoners. Directional motives have two effects: (1) divergence—voters with different preferences hold different beliefs, and (2) desensitization—the relationship between incumbent performance and voter beliefs is weakened. While motivated reasoning does harm accountability, this is generally driven by desensitized voters rather than polarized partisans with politically motivated divergent beliefs. We also analyze the relationship between government performance and vote shares, showing that while motivated reasoning always weakens this relationship, we cannot infer that accountability is also harmed. Finally, we show that our model can be mapped to standard models in which voters are fully Bayesian but have different preferences or information.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 116 , Issue 2 , May 2022 , pp. 751 - 767
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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