Informative campaigns, overpromising, and policy bargaining

Dahjin Kim, Gechun Lin and Keith E. Schnakenberg
Additional contact information
Dahjin Kim: Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA
Gechun Lin: Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA
Keith E. Schnakenberg: Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2024, vol. 36, issue 4, 344-366

Abstract: What is the relationship between policy positions taken in campaigns and those proposed in bargaining when the final policy outcome depends on other political actors? Why do candidates sometimes advocate policies in their campaigns that are unlikely or impossible to pass given the preferences of other actors in the government? We analyze a model in which candidates make non-binding policy platform announcements and then bargain with a Veto player over the final policy if they take office. In the model, a candidate has private information that is related to the policy preferences of a key citizen group and engages in bargaining with a Veto player who is responsive to this information. When the citizen’s group sometimes interprets campaign promises naively, elections are more likely to allow information revelation. Furthermore, in this case, politicians overpromise: the politician’s platform is outside of the range of feasible bargaining outcomes.

Keywords: Elections; game theory; information transmission; political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09516298241268751 (text/html)

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:sae:jothpo:v:36:y:2024:i:4:p:344-366

DOI: 10.1177/09516298241268751

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().