A Vindication of Responsible Parties

John Duggan, Dan Bernhardt and Francesco Squintani ()

No WP58, Wallis Working Papers from University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy

Abstract: Electoral platform convergence is perceived unfavorably by both the popular press and many academic scholars. This paper provides a formal account of these perceived negative effects. We show that when parties do not know voters’ preferences perfectly, voters prefer some platform divergence to the convergent policy outcome of competition between opportunistic, office-motivated, parties. We characterize when voters prefer responsible parties (which weight policy positively in their utility function) to oppor- tunistic ones. Voters prefer responsible parties when office benefits and concentration of moderate voters are high enough relative to the ideological polarization between parties. In particular, with optimally-chosen office benefits, responsible parties improve welfare.

Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2008-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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