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The influence of exogenous economic shocks on electoral outcomes and the popularity of incumbent politicians has been widely investigated, with numerous studies demonstrating that exogenous economic factors can meaningfully shape voter behaviour (Barros Jr., Correa-da-Silva, Neto, & Rangel, 2025).Instead of rationally analysing the performance of incumbent politicians based on endogenous performance, voters have been found to employ heuristics and systematically misattribute blame onto incumbent politicians for exogenous economic shocks that lie outside of incumbent control. However, little research has studied the interaction of this dynamic with the influence of ethnic identity. This research proposal examines the influence ethnic identity exerts over the effect of economic shocks on incumbent political support. Specifically, it posits that ethnic attribution bias will moderate the impact of exogenous economic shocks on incumbent support: Areas that do not share an ethnic identity with a political incumbent will exhibit a relatively greater electoral punishment of the incumbent compared to co-ethnic areas in the aftermath of an exogenous economic shock. Understanding this relationship offers valuable insight into how identity conditions political accountability. By examining the intersection of ethnicity, attribution, and economic voting, this research highlights how identity can be strategically leveraged to influence political support. The remainder of this proposal is structured as follows: Section 1 reviews the related literature on this topic. Section 2 develops a conceptual framework that investigates the research question. Section 3 outlines the data and modelling approach of the proposal. Section 4 concludes with a discussion of potential findings and avenues for future research

Related Literature

This proposal contributes to a large body of literature examining the interaction between behavioural economic theory, identity, and electoral outcomes, drawing upon three core strands: economic voting, behavioural identity effects, and attribution theory.

Economic Voting

Voting is an integral part of any democracy, representing a choice or judgment between alternative governing teams (Kramer, 1971). Economic voting is a phenomenon in which individuals make their voting decisions primarily based on a nation’s economic performance. An individual's choice of candidate will be determined by their own evaluations of the performance and capabilities of different candidates. This accountability mechanism allows citizens to reward or punish incumbents depending on their assessed record in office (Das, Ghosh, & Maitra, 2024).Kramer conceptualises the rational voter as a logical, information-processing individual who “proceeds by collecting information of various kinds and analyses said information in light of their own self-interest and decides which party presents the best package of positions.” (Kramer, 1971, p.133)However, Kramer argues that most voters instead behave irrationally and myopically, making economic voting decisions from limited information typically deriving from election-year economic conditions. This results in voters frequently conflating local and global conditions with incumbent performance (Barros Jr., Correa-da-Silva, Neto, & Rangel, 2025),and holding incumbents accountable for exogenous shocks beyond the scope of incumbent responsibility. A large array of empirical evidence supports this theory. Studying fluctuations in US congressional voting behaviour, Kramer found that economic upturn benefited congressional candidates of the incumbent party while economic decline favoured the opposition. Likewise, Barros concluded that economic performance significantly impacts voting decisions in Brazilian presidential elections, even when the economic conditions are entirely exogenous to the actions and abilities of the incumbent politicians. (Barros Jr., Correa-da-Silva, Neto, & Rangel, 2025). Together, this evidence establishes that irrational retrospective punishment of incumbents for exogenous economic shocks is a systematic and empirically robust phenomenon. This proposal contributes to the literature by identifying a conceptual framework that examines the moderating influence of ethnic identity on the magnitude of this irrational punishment, introducing heterogeneity into what existing models treat as a uniform electoral response.

Behavioural Identity Effects

Electoral outcomes are further shaped by the effect of identity. Akerlof and Kranton posit that identity affects behaviour through its influence on utility functions. They argue that identity is based on social categories, which carry prescriptions that indicate the behaviour appropriate for individuals within said categories (Akerlof & Kranton, 2000).Conforming to these behavioural prescriptions affirms one’s self-image, whereas violating the prescriptions evokes anxiety and discomfort in oneself and in others (Akerlof & Kranton, 2000), thereby shaping utility payoffs associated with individual actions to be identity-related. Individuals will therefore choose actions that maximise their utility given the perceived identity-related costs or benefits of those actions and the behaviour of others around them. This framework implies that voting itself can function as an identity-affirming act, with electoral choices shaped by group membership. This proposal contributes to this literature by developing a mechanism through which identity-based behavioural prescriptions are translated into ethnic heuristics that systematically condition how voters attribute economic blame, connecting Akerlof and Kranton's utility framework directly to the economic voting literature.

Attribution Theory and Heuristics

Attribution theory, as outlined by Ross, is concerned with the attempts of an observer to explain behaviour and draw inferences about actors and their environments (Ross, 1977). By and large, observers behave rationally while making inferences. However, there are several sources of attributional biases that distort these judgements. In a foundational series of papers, Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated that intuitive predictions and judgements made by typical social observers deviate markedly from the dictates of conventional statistical models and instead reflect the operation of a limited number of heuristics (Ross, 1977). Heuristics are principles used by individuals to “reduce complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simpler judgemental operations” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, p.1124). Key heuristic principles that influence voting behaviour are representativeness and availability. Representativeness describes an observer's tendency “to predict that outcome that appears most representative of salient features of the evidence, while ignoring conventional statistical criteria” (Ross, 1977, p.199).The probability of an event is evaluated by the degree to which event A is deemed by the observer to be representative of origin B, with probability being determined by stereotypes rather than statistical reality. Similarly, the availability heuristic describes an observer's tendency to assess the probability of an event by the ease with which instances or occurrences can be brought to mind (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).Taken together, these heuristics predispose voters to attribute economic deterioration to the internal characteristics they associate with an incumbent, while systematically discounting external or situational factors. This proposal contributes to this literature by integrating attribution theory with behavioural identity effects and economic voting theory, arguing that the ethnic identity of the voter relative to the incumbent determines which heuristics are activated, and therefore conditions the direction and magnitude of blame attribution following an exogenous economic shock.

Conceptual Framework

To formalise the argument, this paper develops a conceptual framework which advances that ethnic identity conditions the electoral punishment incumbents receive following exogenous economic shocks. Rational voting models predict that incumbents should only be held accountable for economic downturns endogenous to their own policy decisions, and that any such punishment should be uniform across the electorate. Under this baseline, exogenous shocks outside the scope of incumbent responsibility should not affect vote share. However, a substantial economic voting literature demonstrates that electorates systematically violate this prediction. As Kramer observes, most voters behave myopically, drawing on limited information and election-year economic conditions rather than engaging in rational information-processing. This results in voters punishing incumbents for economic conditions beyond their control. The mechanism through which voters arrive at this misattribution is explained by attribution theory and the operation of heuristics. As Ross outlines, attribution theory is concerned with how observers explain behaviour and draw inferences about actors and their environments. While observers broadly aim to reason rationally, their judgements are systematically distorted by attributional biases. Voters will use heuristics to attribute blame based upon the internal characteristics they associate with an incumbent while systematically underweighting external or situational factors. The result is a pattern of misattribution that is driven by stereotypes.

This paper posits that ethnic identity is a key moderator of this attributional process. Drawing on Akerlof and Kranton’s identity utility framework, individual behaviour is shaped by the social categories to which individuals belong, and the behavioural prescriptions those categories carry. Applied to voting behaviour, this framework suggests that the ethnic relationship between a voter and an incumbent activates identity-specific heuristics that shape how economic blame is assigned. Specifically, this paper advances two related propositions. First, voters who are non-co-ethnics with an incumbent will draw on heuristics rooted in out-group stereotypes when assessing incumbent performance following an exogenous shock. The representativeness and availability heuristics will make negative attributions more cognitively accessible and more intuitively plausible for non-co-ethnic voters, resulting in a heightened tendency to hold the incumbent responsible for the shock relative to co-ethnics. Second, voters who are co-ethnics with an incumbent will draw on heuristics rooted in in-group identification, producing a tendency to discount incumbent culpability. This will result in a relatively lessened tendency to hold the incumbent responsible for an exogenous shock.

Ha: Areas that do not share an ethnic identity with a political incumbent will exhibit a relatively greater electoral punishment of the incumbent compared to co-ethnic areas in the aftermath of an exogenous economic shock

Taken together, these propositions suggest that the aggregate electoral cost of an exogenous economic shock is not uniformly distributed across the electorate but is instead stratified along ethnic lines. This framework offers a theoretically grounded explanation for why the same exogenous shock may produce differential electoral outcomes depending on the ethnic composition of a nation.

Research Design

To test the hypothesis that ethnic identity conditions electoral punishment following exogenous economic shocks, this paper proposes a difference-in-differences (DiD) design. This approach is well-suited to the research question as it allows for the estimation of a causal effect by comparing changes in electoral outcomes across groups defined by their ethnic relationship to the incumbent, before and after the onset of an exogenous economic shock.

Yit = βo + β1 Treatmenti + β2Postt + β3 (Treatmenti x Postt ) + εit

Data Source

This research study will use presidential election results and socioeconomic data from Nigeria in 2011 and 2015. Nigeria is well-suited to this theory as the country is deeply heterogeneous with two broad ethnic blocs concentrated in distinct regions. The incumbent in this design is Goodluck Jonathan, who was elected as president in 2011 and contested the 2015 elections. States that are majority co-ethnics with Jonathan are labelled as the control group, and states that are majority non-co-ethnics with Jonathan are labelled as the treatment group. The treatment will be the global oil price collapse of 2014. This crisis serves as an exogenous economic shock to the Nigerian economy that resulted in a sharp deterioration of the country’s GDP. The unit of measurement will be aggregated to polling units within the states.

Dependent Variable

The dependent variable Yit measures the presidential vote share received by Jonathan in polling unit i at election t. A decline in Yit between 2011 and 2015 represents electoral punishment of the incumbent.

Independent Variables

Treatmenti is a binary variable that is equal to 1 for polling units located in majority non-co-ethnic areas and 0 for polling units in majority co-ethnic areas. Postt is a binary variable that captures the average change in incumbent votes share across polling units between 2011 and 2015. This represents the common time trend between the polling units. Treatmenti x Postt is an interaction term that measures the additional decline in non-co-ethnic polling units over the common time trend captured by Postt. This represents our predictor variable, which indicates whether non-co-ethnic polling units punished Jonathan disproportionately relative to co-ethnic polling units following the oil shock.

Limitations

The parallel trends assumption is critical to the validity of a DiD estimator. It stipulates that in the absence of treatment, the treatment and control groups would have followed parallel trends over time. Given the large number of phenomena that affect electoral outcomes and the heterogeneous political environment of Nigeria, this assumption is under strain and represents a threat to the internal validity of causal estimates. To limit this issue, this study will employ robustness checks that analyse pre-treatment trends before 2011. Furthermore, as this analysis aggregates at the polling unit level, it is subject to the ecological fallacy. Accordingly, this study interprets results as area-level associations rather than individual-level causal effects.

Expected Results

For our hypothesis to be valid, this proposal expects the following results. Β1 should be large and negative, representing the pre-existing disadvantage Jonathan faced in non-co-ethnic polling units. Β2 should be small and negative, representing the minimal level of punishment co-ethnic polling units exert on the incumbent. β3 is the crucial coefficient which tests our hypothesis. It should be negative and large, representing this paper’s theoretical prediction that non-co-ethnic polling units disproportionately misattribute the exogenous shock to the incumbent.

Discussion:

This proposal has developed a theoretical framework and empirical research design to examine whether ethnic identity conditions the electoral punishment incumbents receive following exogenous economic shocks. Drawing on economic voting theory, Akerlof and Kranton’s behavioural identity framework, and attribution theory, it has argued that ethnic attribution bias will moderate the impact of exogenous economic shocks on incumbent support. To test this argument, the proposal adopts a difference-in-differences design using presidential election data from Nigeria across the 2011 and 2015 election cycles. If the hypothesis is supported, the findings would carry meaningful implications for economic voting models, which currently treat electoral punishment as uniform across the electorate. Evidence of ethnic attribution bias would suggest that these models are mis-specified and that political accountability in ethnically diverse democracies is systematically distorted by identity.

Bibliography

Akerlof, G., & Kranton, R. (2000). Economics and Identity. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 15(3), 715-753.

Barros Jr., F., Correa-da-Silva, G., Neto, V. P., & Rangel, V. (2025). Economic conditions and voting behavior. Public Choice.

Das, K., Ghosh, A., & Maitra, P. (2024). Exogenous shocks and electoral outcomes. Public Choice, 201, 145-179.

Kramer, G. (1971). Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896-1964. The American Political Science Review, 65(1), 131-143.

Ross, L. (1977). The Intuitive Psychologist And His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 173-220.

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.