The Revelation Incentive for Issue Engagement in Campaigns

Chitralekha Basu () and Matthew Knowles
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Chitralekha Basu: University of Cologne

No 132, ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany

Abstract: Empirical studies have found that although parties focus disproportionately on favorable issues, they also address the same issues – especially, salient issues – through much of the ‘short campaign’. We present a model of multiparty competi- tion with endogenous issue salience where parties behave in line with these patterns in equilibrium. In our model, parties’ issue emphases have two effects: influencing voter priorities, and informing voters about their issue positions. Thus, parties trade off two incentives when choosing issues to emphasize: increasing the importance of favorable issues (‘the salience incentive’), and revealing positions on salient issues to sympathetic voters (‘the revelation incentive’). The relative strength of these two incentives determines how far elections constrain parties to respond to voters’ initial issue priorities.

Keywords: Issue competition; Issue salience; Elections; Campaigns; Multiparty competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63 pages
Date: 2021-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mic and nep-pol
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https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkdps/ECONtribute_132_2021.pdf Third version, 2024 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:132

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