Replication Data for: Executive Accountability Beyond Outcomes: Experimental Evidence on Public Evaluations of Powerful Prime Ministers

While executives in many democracies have constitutional powers to circumvent the majoritarian legislative process to make policy, political scientists know relatively little about whether and when ordinary people hold executives accountable for the process they use. To study this issue beyond the American presidency, we conduct a series of large survey experiments in France, where the institution of the confidence procedure puts the government in a strong position relative to parliament. Our experiments highlight that public evaluations of the executive reflect a fundamental trade-off between policy and process. If they face significant opposition in the legislative process, executives either have to accept policy failure or risk punishment for the use of procedural force. People dislike both results, and the average popularity gain of using the confidence procedure over not delivering the policy is modest. Moreover, in some contexts executives are strictly better off not legislating rather than applying force.

尽管诸多民主国家的行政首脑拥有宪法赋予的绕过多数主义立法程序以制定政策的权力，但政治学界对于普通民众是否会、以及何时会就行政首脑所采用的程序对其追责的问题，尚且认知有限。为了在美国总统制之外研究这一议题，我们在法国开展了一系列大型调查实验。在法国，信任表决程序（confidence procedure）这一制度使得政府相较于议会占据优势地位。本系列实验结果显示，民众对行政首脑的评价，反映出政策与程序之间存在根本性的权衡取舍。若行政首脑在立法过程中遭遇强烈反对，则要么接受政策失败的结果，要么因使用程序强制手段而面临被追责的风险。民众对这两种结果均抱有反感，且相较于未能出台政策而言，采用信任表决程序所能带来的平均支持率涨幅十分有限。此外，在部分场景下，行政首脑选择不推进立法，反而比采用程序强制手段更具收益优势。