Responsabilização eleitoral na Argentina e no Brasil: mais do que economia, uma questão de preferência política

Abstract

This thesis has two objectives. The first is to investigate whether and how party preference influences the relationship between voters’ assessments of government performance and their vote. The second objective is to discuss whether party preference interfere in the process of attribution of responsibility, that is, in voters’ ability to attribute responsibility to the president for an act and to sanction it or not. For such analyses, two theoretical and methodological models are tested in Argentinean and Brazilian scenarios: the selective evaluation model and the selective attribution of responsibility model. Based on the selective evaluation model, I test the hypothesis that, by adopting a selective evaluation, the government's party voter becomes impervious to the performance of public policies. And this behavior would not be exclusive to government supporters. The opposition's party voters would have a similar judgment regarding the preservation of their preferences and would disregard the government's achievements, even if they were positive. Based on the selective responsibility attribution model, I test the hyphotesis that the responsibility calculation should not be made on all occasions. Among government supporters, recognizing that the president has responsibility for the results of the economy would have little or no relevance for voting, given the mobilization of the affect heuristic. On the other hand, opposition supporters would be more likely to perform the responsibility calculation. Both models are tested with survey data from LAPOP (2006-2014) and experimental survey data. In short, I conclude that party voters reconcile their political preferences and their perceptions of the facts. Among government supporters, the conciliation involves not mobilizing the attributes of the economic vote, whether subjective evaluation or responsibility. Among opposition supporters, the conciliation implies rejection of the candidate of the governing party, arising from political preferences, and the execution of the calculation of reward or punishment if the intention is to vote for the other candidates.