Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP11460
Authors: Sergei Guriev; Daniel Treisman
Abstract: Why are some governments popular with their citizens while others get low approval ratings? International surveys show enormous variation both across countries and over time. In what we believe to be the first systematic, global, comparative study of political approval, we examine a panel of government ratings from 128 countries including both democracies and authoritarian states, over the years 2005-2014. We find that good economic performance is robustly correlated with higher approval in both democracies and non-democracies. Approval is also higher in the year of a presidential election in both types of regimes. In non-democracies, information matters: greater press freedom and internet penetration result in lower approval while internet censorship is associated with higher approval; these variables have no impact on approval in democracies. We did not find any clear relationship with repression, suggesting that if fear inflates ratings in non-democracies this may be offset by the dissatisfaction that repression also causes.
Keywords: government approval; political popularity; economic performance; media freedom; repression
JEL Codes: P16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Good economic performance (P17) | Government approval (G18) |
| Higher growth rate of GDP per capita (O57) | Increased approval ratings (D79) |
| Presidential elections (K16) | Higher approval ratings (D79) |
| Greater press freedom (P14) | Lower approval ratings in nondemocracies (D72) |
| Internet penetration (L96) | Lower approval ratings in nondemocracies (D72) |
| Internet censorship (K24) | Higher approval ratings in nondemocracies (D79) |
| Repression (D70) | Approval ratings (D79) |
| Actual performance (D29) | Public approval (D79) |