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ABSTRACT
Electoral cycles in public administration decisions: evidence from German municipalities. Regional Studies. This paper provides evidence that there is an electoral cycle in public administration decisions using data from German local governments in the period 2001–10. Specifically, it finds that the number of building licences issued by the public administration significantly increases in election years. This result is robust to various specification tests and to dealing with the potential endogeneity of the election timing.
摘要
公共行政决策的选举週期：来自德国各行政区的证据. 区域研究。本文运用德国地方政府自 2001 年至 2010 年的数据，提供证据揭示，公共行政决策中具有选举週期。本文特别发现，公共行政所核发的建筑执照数量，在选举年间显着增加。该研究结果对于各种规范测试和应对选举期间可能的内生因素而言皆是强健的。
RÉSUMÉ
Les cycles électoraux et les décisions de l'administration publique: des résultats provenant des municipalités allemandes. Regional Studies. À partir des données provenant des gouvernements municipaux allemands pour la période allant de 2001 à 2010, cet article apporte des preuves que les décisions de l'administration publique démontrent un cycle électoral. Plus précisément, il s'avère que le nombre de permis de construire délivrés par l'administration publique augmente sensiblement en période d’élections. Ce résultat résiste bien à tout test de spécification et à l'endogénéité éventuelle de la date des élections.
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Die Rolle von Wahlzyklen für Entscheidungen der öffentlichen Verwaltung: Belege aus deutschen Gemeinden. Regional Studies. Dieser Beitrag liefert anhand von Daten deutscher Kommunalbehörden im Zeitraum von 2001 bis 2010 Belege dafür, dass die Entscheidungen der öffentlichen Verwaltung Wahlzyklen unterliegen. Insbesondere wird festgestellt, dass die Anzahl der durch die öffentliche Verwaltung erteilten Baugenehmigungen in Wahljahren signifikant steigt. Dieses Ergebnis ist gegenüber verschiedenen Spezifikationstests sowie einer Berücksichtigung der potenziellen Endogenität des Wahlzeitpunkts robust.
RESUMEN
El papel de los ciclos electorales en las decisiones de la administración pública: evidencia de municipios alemanes. Regional Studies. A partir de datos de autoridades locales alemanas durante el periodo de 2001 a 2010, en este artículo se ofrecen pruebas de que existe un ciclo electoral en las decisiones de la administración pública. En concreto, se observa que el número de licencias urbanísticas concedidas por la administración pública aumenta de modo significativo en los años electorales. Este resultado es contundente con respecto a varios ensayos de especificación y al tener en cuenta la posible endogeneidad de las fechas electorales.
SCHLÜSSELWÖRTER:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author thanks the associate editor as well as three anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments and suggestions.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
SUPPLEMENTAL DATA
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://10.1080/00343404.2015.1120282
Notes
1. The only reform that has taken place in the study period is to the building law in 2002. However, this affected all Hesse's municipalities equally and is therefore captured by the year-fixed effects. Nonetheless, the robustness of all results was probed by using only the 2003–10 period. As the results were completely unchanged, the results with the larger sample are reported here.
2. The council is elected via a proportional election system. The administrator is elected in a run-off election: if no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes in the first round, only the top two candidates advance to the second round.
3. Additionally, paragraphs 55 and 58 HBO regulate the granting of building licences. Paragraph 55 states that for certain building types such as carhouses, lightning protection systems or kiosks, no building licence is required. As these building types have no residential purpose, they are not included in the main outcome variable. Furthermore, paragraph 58 specifies how building licences should be granted for special constructions. These are, for example, buildings with an unusual height or those with an extremely high number of visitors. As these buildings have a higher exposure to hazard, they are inspected much more strictly. However, these buildings are seldom residential buildings.
4. This rule is designed in such a way that the municipality must become active (i.e., it must raise an objection against issuing a building licence) within a month. If the municipality does not become active, the applicant will have the right to start building. This could be important because one might be tempted to think that the administrator can only implement his preferred policy (i.e., more licences) if the administrative staff does not shirk. In the present setting, however, a shirking administrative staff leads to more building licences, and is therefore beneficial for the administrator. In general, any kind of action of the administrative staff to reduce the number of building licences in the election year would cause a downward bias in the estimates, i.e., if anything, the estimates would be too low.
5. Franzese (Citation2000) even takes the precise day of the election into account. The present paper follows Klomp and de Haan (Citation2013c) and considers only the month of the elections.
6. In the existing literature, the weighted election variable has so far only been motivated by incentives for politicians. Conversely, however, it may also be the case that the memory of the voters influences pre-election policies. If, for example, voters only remember the last month before the elections, then the administrator would have only an incentive to manipulate policies in this specific month. This would have important consequences for the estimation of electoral cycles, and should consequently be investigated in future research.
7. The comparison of and indeed suggests that measurement error is more important than omitted variable bias in the current setting.
8. An important issue in any IV strategy is the strength of the instruments. However, in a dynamic panel data model, such a test is not straightforward and has not been developed so far (Bazzi & Clemens, Citation2013). In non-reported regressions, nonetheless, some suggestive evidence is provided that weak instruments should not be a concern in the present setting. Details are available from the author upon request.
9. Administrators from the Greens and the FDP have been relatively rare and are thus not used as single categories.
10. Property tax A (Grundsteuer A) is not included because (1) it is relatively unimportant in terms of revenue and (2) some municipalities do not charge it, leading to missing values when change rates are calculated. In non-reported robustness checks, Property Tax A has also been included, but it was found that the results are completely unchanged.
11. Hansen's J test does not reject the null hypothesis when only the variable instead of the whole set of election indicators (i.e., pre- and post-election indicators) is entered. This suggests that the employed instruments per se are not a problem. Rather, it is known that the Hansen's J test might lead to misleading results when multiple instruments from the same dynamics are used. As this is the case when the whole set of election indicators is entered, the results from the Hansen's J test one should be interpreted with caution.
12. As an alternative robustness check, the entire prematurely ended term before each early election was excluded from the sample. Results were unchanged.