You want me, but I no longer want you. The punishment-reward mechanism and institutional quality in Italian regions

Following the principal theory concerning the foundations of voting behaviour it is possible to assert that citizens hold politicians and their parties accountable through their votes. From this perspective, if citizens perceive the quality of local institutions to be a result of the policies enacted by local authorities they may punish or reward the incumbent parties. By means of a quantitative approach, our results, based on the analysis of 15 different election rounds, show that various dimensions of institutional quality impact voting behaviour in Italian provinces. The punishment-reward mechanism suggests that political preferences change because local institutions lack quality.