ABSTRACT
As noted in Chapters 6 and 7, Peter Nannestad and Martin Paldam estimated that in 19 developed democracies of the OECD the average of what they called “the cost of ruling” is 2.25 percent per term. This was calculated as the percentage point change in the share of the vote for the party or coalition in government from one election to the next (from election at t−1 to election at t) from 1948 to 1997. The relationship was stable for four decades, but by the end of the period the cost had doubled, a development they attributed to “the economic changes in the 1990s.” That dip aside, the incumbent penalty, they claimed, constitutes a set of “very basic facts,” “an unusually stable constant” “that does not depend upon the election system, the party-structure, or the size of the country” (Nannestad and Paldam 1999, 3, 6, 9).
