| Summary/Abstract |
In recent years, the term “flip-flopper” has become increasingly prominent. Politicians employ the term in an attempt to make their opponents look unattractive to voters. The question of whether this tactic works, however, remains unanswered. Existing research demonstrates that citizens do not like inconsistency as a matter of principle, but we know little about its effects in practice. In this paper, I conduct an experiment that allows me to ascertain the effect of a leader’s inconsistency on citizens’ assessments. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I find that citizens do not always react negatively to a leader who changes his position. Instead, they are generally indifferent between a consistent and an inconsistent politician provided that the leader supports the citizen’s preferred policy in the current time period.
|