Abstract

Central bank independence (CBI) implies that elected governments delegate monetary policy to technocrats in central banks. I argue that given the substantial influence of monetary policy on consumption, investments, exchange rates, capital flows and government spending, all of which critically determine the performance of the economy, CBI can blur the lines of responsibility for economic performance between elected governments and central banks. It can thereby weaken voters’ ability and willingness to electorally punish (or reward) governments on the basis of economic outcomes. Utilizing data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, I test how CBI conditions the effects of macroeconomic performance on electoral support for incumbents in 38 countries from 1996 to 2016. The results show that CBI significantly attenuates the reward and punishment mechanism of elections based on economic records. The finding of this article sheds new lights on how the problem of democratic accountability caused by the rise of CBI actually materializes in elections, the most important sanctioning mechanism of democracy. Further, it identifies CBI as another crucial condition that can explain variations in the magnitude of economic voting across countries, as yet unexplored in the election literature.

摘要

中央银行独立性（CBI）意味着民选政府将货币政策委托给中央银行的技术官僚。我认为，鉴于货币政策对消费、投资、汇率、资本流动和政府支出的重大影响，所有这些都对经济表现至关重要，CBI 可以模糊民选政府和中央政府之间对经济表现的责任界限。银行。因此，它可能会削弱选民根据经济成果通过选举惩罚（或奖励）政府的能力和意愿。利用选举制度比较研究的数据，我测试了 CBI 如何影响 1996 年至 2016 年间 38 个国家宏观经济表现对现任者选举支持的影响。结果表明，CBI 显着削弱了基于经济记录的选举的奖惩机制。这篇文章的发现为我们揭示了 CBI 的兴起所引起的民主问责问题如何在选举这一民主最重要的制裁机制中实际实现的问题提供了新的线索。此外，它将 CBI 视为另一个关键条件，可以解释各国经济投票规模的差异，而选举文献尚未对此进行探讨。