Reverse Political Coattails under a Technocratic Government: New Evidence on the National Electoral Benefits of Local Party Incumbency

Abstract

Does the control of local offices benefit parties in national elections when local incumbents are not strategically supported by the central government? To address this question, I study the national electoral effects of local party incumbency in the context of a technocratic central government instituted following an unexpected tragic event that forced the resignation of the previous government. Using a regression discontinuity method applied to mayoral races in Romania, I document that the control of local offices causally generated significant vote share premia in the 2016 parliamentary ballot - estimated at 10-11 percentage points, or roughly one fourth of the dependent variable’s mean. My results show that the affiliation of local incumbents can be consequential for parliamentary power absent a contemporaneous party alignment linking local and central governmental forces.