DEBORAH A. ORTH
Accountability in a Federal System:
The Governor, the President, and
Economic Expectations

How do people hold elected officials accountable for expected economic conditions in a system of government in which jurisdiction and responsibility are divided such as they are in the United States? Due to the president's visibility, people may hold all elected officials of the president's party responsible for economic conditions. Or, people may be able to differentiate between state and national economic conditions and jurisdictional responsibilities and hold governors of either party accountable for state economic conditions. I use ordered probit to analyze a pooled model of 13 individual-level mid-1990s Michigan opinion surveys and find no evidence that individuals consistently rely on a presidency-centered referenda model of cognition when evaluating the state's governor. Instead, gubernatorial performance ratings reflect an incumbent-centered accountability model. The evidence also suggests jurisdictional accountability, where gubernatorial evaluations are influenced by state economic expectations, but not by national economic expectations.