Back The municipal budget dedicated to festa major town festivities can be decisive when it comes to re-electing mayor

The municipal budget dedicated to festa major town festivities can be decisive when it comes to re-electing mayor

An academic study that includes more than 2,000 municipalities in Spain shows that mayors who doubled the per capita amounts allocated to local festivities during the last year of their mandate made a benefit of approximately 2% at the subsequent elections. The research, which involved UPF professor Toni Rodon, explains that this relationship occurs when the governing team has allocated a generous amount to local festivities throughout the term and when the financial situation of the municipality is stable.

16.06.2020

Imatge inicial

Existing research concerning local public policy and political behaviour is a central theme in political science, but so far, studies have focused primarily on “basic” and fundamental public goods, such as education, health and infrastructure.

There has been little research to help understand the relationship between social and leisure events and local-level political behaviour, although it is an important area, because local governments do not have to coordinate with supramunicipal authorities and have few restrictions in the organization and implementation of such events.

A study by the researchers Marc Guinjoan (Institutions and Political Economic Research Group of the UB) and Toni Rodon (Department of Political and Social Sciences at UPF) focuses on this still very neglected area and shows that a large budget allocated to the festa major increases the electoral performance of the party governing at the town or city hall.

According to the authors of the study, published recently in the journal Local Government Studies, mayors who doubled the per capita amount dedicated to local festivities during the last year of their mandate benefited by around 2% in subsequent elections.  

They have also found that if the mayor halves the per capita amount allocated to local festivities during the last year of their mandate, the election results can be expected to worsen by 1.2%.

“These percentages may seem small, but it should be borne in mind that the results are typically close and these differences may be crucial to form government”, the researchers assure.

A study of more than 2,000 municipalities throughout Spain between 2011 and 2015

The research uses original data on the municipal elections held in Spain in 2011 and 2015 and analyses information on spending on local festivities at more than 2,104 municipalities during this period. This sample accounts for almost 26% of all municipalities in the state and 64% of the Spanish population, according to data for 2015.

The analysis takes into account such aspects as voter turnout, the difference between the percentage of votes received by the various parties, the per capita amount of money allocated to festivities, the budget per inhabitant, the evolution of the population, the percentage of foreign population, and changes in the rate of unemployment or municipal debt.

Better electoral performance when spending on festivities remains high

The authors have shown that as the resources devoted to local festivities increase as the legislature progresses, the mechanism that links the money earmarked for festivities during the previous year to the improvement in results in the local elections soars. That is, spending on festivities during the year before the elections has a positive effect when the municipal government maintains relatively high levels of spending during the legislature.

Moreover, the research also reveals that these positive electoral effects occur when local debt is low and the financial situation of the municipality is positive. However, if municipal debt is high, citizens are likely to be more dissatisfied with the team in government, and then, high expenditure on festivities may be counter-productive.

“Local festivities are an attractive political tool to gain visibility, increase popularity and, ultimately, improve the chances of the mayor being re-elected in the upcoming elections”, the researchers affirm, emphasizing the need to analyse whether these results can be extrapolated to other geographical and cultural contexts and other forms of entertainment, such as concerts, sports events or festivals.

Reference work: Marc Guionjoan, Toni Rodon (June 2020). “Let’s party! The impact of local festivities on the incumbent’s electoral support”. Local Government Studies https://doi.org/10.1080/03003930.2020.1771308

 

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