Presidential Support in a Context of Crisis and Recovery in Peru, 1985-2008

Abstract

Largely due to the theoretical weight given to the role of economic crisis, the existing literature on presidential approval in Peru offers a variety of competing explanations about the factors that account for presidential support. These competing explanations share one bond: they emphasize the absence of traditional economic voting. We argue here that the diversity of interpretations and empirical findings stem from the high degree of volatility experienced by economic indicators, and the failure of existing research to account for the time-dependent variance of presidential popularity. We analyze the impact of economic performance and key political events on the determination of presidential approval in Peru for the period 1985-2008 using an Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) model. Our findings suggest that the effects of economic conditions on presidential approval approximate more traditional economic voting postures than previously thought. To the extent that crisis-ridden economic conditions in Peru have helped to theorize the alleged departures from traditional economic voting, the country is an ideal case to revisit standing propositions in the literature, particularly in a moment when those crisis-ridden economic conditions have disappeared.