Replication Data for: Can Elites Escape Blame by Explaining Themselves? Suspicion and the Limits of Elite Explanations

Holding elected officials accountable for their behavior in office is a foundational task facing citizens. Elected officials attempt to influence this accountability process by explaining their behavior with an eye toward mitigating the blame they might receive for taking controversial actions. We address a critical limitation in the literature on elite explanation giving and accountability: the absence of attention to conflicting information regarding the official’s behavior. We show across three pre-registered survey experiments that the effectiveness of explanations are negated when other speakers offer counter-explanations that focus attention on the potential ulterior motives of the official. We further show that this occurs even when the counter-explanation comes from a partisan source with low credibility. Our studies imply that elected officials experience less leeway for their actions than existing work allows and highlights important tensions concerning the interrelationship of elite behavior and accountability processes.