Political Science Research and Methods
Electoral opportunism and economic policy: disentangling myopia and moderation
2026-05-21
This study jointly considers two opportunistic behaviors among political incumbents that may be triggered by electoral uncertainty—policy myopia and policy moderation—which hitherto have been the focus of separate research traditions. We evaluate their prevalence in economic policy-making among Swedish local governments, using a new measure of electoral competitiveness, capturing the incumbent government’s re-election probability, for which plausibly exogenous variation is generated by exploiting national-level polls. We find a substantial moderating effect of competitiveness on incumbents’ tax rate decisions—shifting policy towards the political center—but little evidence of policy myopia, whether in taxation, budget balance, or public investment. Corroborated by evidence from a politician survey, these findings caution against the popular understanding of democratic policy-making as inherently short-sighted.