Political polarization and primary elections

Andrea Cintolesi

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, vol. 200, issue C, 596-617

Abstract: I provide a causal test of the impact of primary elections on political polarization. I exploit the staggered introduction of primary elections for US senators and representatives in Indiana and New York State. Using a difference-in-differences design, I show that primaries deliver less-polarized politicians, reducing the ideological gap between parties that existed before the reform by one-fifth. I interpret the results in light of a conceptual framework in which primaries reduce the cost of participating in the candidate selection processes, thereby also giving moderate voters incentives to participate. The findings suggest that primary elections are an institution able to reduce the welfare costs associated with polarization.

Keywords: Primary elections; Candidate selection; Polarization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122002141
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:200:y:2022:i:c:p:596-617

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.06.018

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().