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<p>What drives popular support for political executives? Compared to normal times, we know little about how the public responds to executives in extraordinary circumstances, and we know even less about similarities and differences across crisis events. While a calculating public may sanction incumbents for adverse events, the unexpected nature of many crises has the potential to increase leaders’ approval ratings. Based on time series analyses of executive approval from 35 countries across 25 years and drawing on an original Crisis Events Dataset, we show that the strength of rallies corresponds to crises’ degree of plausible exogeneity and to whether their resolution requires concentrated action by the government. Crises in three domains – security, the environment, and public health – tend to produce rallies rather than reprimands, while economic shocks yield no direct effect on approval. Lastly, we find that institutional features are less important in predicting approval during crises than they are in normal times. By demonstrating crises’ potential to upend the mechanisms of political accountability, our findings lay a foundation for further inquiry into how political context matters for public opinion in extraordinary times.</p>

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Executive Approval in Extraordinary Times: Comparing across Crises

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

    开放获取

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月18日

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  • Timothy Hellwig,
  • Ryan E. Carlin,
  • Jonathan Hartlyn,
  • Will Horne,
  • Gregory J. Love,
  • Cecilia Martínez-Gallardo,
  • Matthew M. Singer

摘要

What drives popular support for political executives? Compared to normal times, we know little about how the public responds to executives in extraordinary circumstances, and we know even less about similarities and differences across crisis events. While a calculating public may sanction incumbents for adverse events, the unexpected nature of many crises has the potential to increase leaders’ approval ratings. Based on time series analyses of executive approval from 35 countries across 25 years and drawing on an original Crisis Events Dataset, we show that the strength of rallies corresponds to crises’ degree of plausible exogeneity and to whether their resolution requires concentrated action by the government. Crises in three domains – security, the environment, and public health – tend to produce rallies rather than reprimands, while economic shocks yield no direct effect on approval. Lastly, we find that institutional features are less important in predicting approval during crises than they are in normal times. By demonstrating crises’ potential to upend the mechanisms of political accountability, our findings lay a foundation for further inquiry into how political context matters for public opinion in extraordinary times.