Government Alternation and its Implications on Democratic Performance

The thesis deals with the concept of government alternation and its potential implications. The purpose of the thesis is twofold. On one side it gives an appropriate definition of the concept of alternation both in theoretical and empirical terms. On the other side the thesis aims at testing empirically the effects of government alternation on two important dimensions of democratic performance: accountability and responsiveness. Government alternation, enhancing the degree of competitiveness of political systems, strengthens the relation of accountability between voters and their representatives and makes governments responsive to voters preferences. The concept of alternation is analysed according to two fundamental dimensions: the possibility of alternation, determined by the political-institutional setting of countries, and its empirical occurrence. The present work distinguishes among three different types of alternation: partisan, ideological and complete ideological alternation. Accountability is operationalized with the capacity of states to control political corruption, whereas responsiveness is defined by the levels of ideological congruence among the median voter, the median legislator and the government. Empirical results show that the possibility of alternation has no effects on democratic performance, whereas its empirical occurrence, especially in the ideological dimension, plays a positive and significant role