Replication Data for: How Do Voters Hold Politicians Accountable for Personal Welfare? Evidence of a Self-Serving Bias

Abstract: "Examining a government’s record is difficult. This is a problem for voters who want to hold governments accountable. One solution is for voters to hold governments accountable for changes in their personal welfare. Yet, it is often unclear whether changes in personal welfare are caused by government policies or voters’ own actions. Since voters have a desire to protect their self-image, this ambiguity might fuel a self-serving bias in attribution. That is, voters might take personal responsibility for positive changes in personal welfare and hold the government responsible for negative changes. Based on data from election surveys and survey experiments, this article shows that voters attribute responsibility for personal welfare in this self-serving way. This hurts democratic accountability because voters do not reward governments (enough) for improving their personal welfare." Instructions for reproduction of tables and figures: (1) Download all files to the same folder. (2) Set directory to this folder in Stata. (3) Run script study1_replication.do, study2_replication.do and study3_replication.do to reproduce tables and figures related to study 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Notes: This reproduces tables and figures in the article as well as the tables and figures in the online appendices. Stata 15 (IC) was used to produce the figures and tables in the article.