Vox Populi, Vox Dei? Tacit Collusion in Politics

Christian Johansson, Anders Kärnä () and Jaakko Meriläinen ()
Additional contact information
Christian Johansson: Chalmers University of Technology, Postal: and University of Gothenburg
Anders Kärnä: Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Postal: Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden, https://www.ifn.se/en/researchers/affiliated-researchers/anders-karna/

No 1393, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: We study competition between political parties in repeated elections with probabilistic voting, allowing a multidimensional policy space and multiple political parties. This model entails multiple equilibria. When parties hold different opinions on some policy, they may take different policy positions that do not coincide with the median voter’s preferred policy platform but converge towards it. In contrast, when parties have a mutual understanding on a particular policy, their policy positions may converge (on some dimension) but not to the median voter’s preferred policy. Parties may collude with one another and take a position that differs from what the median voter prefers, despite political competition. Collusion may collapse, for instance, after the entry of a new political party. We substantiate the theoretical arguments with descriptive evidence using Swedish survey data on politicians and voters, which suggests that there is competition on some dimensions and collusion on others.

Keywords: Electoral competition; Partisan collusion; Probabilistic voting; Repeated elections; Tacit collusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C73 D72 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2021-06-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mic and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Vox Populi, Vox Dei? Tacit collusion in politics (2023)
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