Local governments' re-election and its determinants: New evidence based on a Bayesian approach

•We analyze the effect of public spending on municipal re-election in Spain.•In contrast to most previous studies, we use Bayesian techniques.•Our findings show how a given covariate affects the probability of being re-elected.•We find that increases in spending positively impact on being re-elected.•The effect of capital expenditure has a non-negligible temporal component.

We analyzed the effect of public spending on the probability of re-election of Spanish local governments during the 2000-2007 period using Bayesian techniques. Although the literature on political budget cycles is now fairly large, few contributions have explicitly analyzed the determinants of re-election. The use of Bayesian techniques in this context is particularly interesting because, unlike most previous studies, results are not presented as a summary effect such as the average. Rather, our findings show exactly how a given covariate affects the probability of being re-elected. We find that, in general, increases in local government spending positively impact on local governments' chances of re-election. Moreover, the capital expenditure over the whole term positively affects the re-election probability, although the pre-electoral capital expenditure has a stronger effect on the chances of re-election. We also find that the electorate only rewards increases in current expenditures made in the pre-election period.