There is a large literature on the comparative accountability of elected vs. appointed public officials. From a theoretical point of view, elected officials might be more responsive to voters than appointed ones, since they are directly assessed on the basis of their performance on the issues they are responsible for. But for this mechanism to work, voters must have information about this performance, and the mass media can play here a crucial role. Focusing on education superintendents in U.S. states, we use automatic keyword searches to analyse their coverage on daily newspapers, and in fact find that elected superintendents get more media coverage than appointed ones. This additional coverage is concentrated at the time of electoral campaigns, and appears to be larger when bad news about school performance are available.
I am news, are you? Newspaper coverage of elected vs. appointed officials
PUGLISI, RICCARDO;
2008-01-01
Abstract
There is a large literature on the comparative accountability of elected vs. appointed public officials. From a theoretical point of view, elected officials might be more responsive to voters than appointed ones, since they are directly assessed on the basis of their performance on the issues they are responsible for. But for this mechanism to work, voters must have information about this performance, and the mass media can play here a crucial role. Focusing on education superintendents in U.S. states, we use automatic keyword searches to analyse their coverage on daily newspapers, and in fact find that elected superintendents get more media coverage than appointed ones. This additional coverage is concentrated at the time of electoral campaigns, and appears to be larger when bad news about school performance are available.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
