The Determinants of Success of Special Interests in Redistributive Politics

Avinash Kamalakar Dixit () and John Londregan

No 1054, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We construct a locational model of majority voting when competing parties offer special favours to interest groups. Each group's membership is heterogeneous in its affinities for the two parties. Individuals face a trade-off between party affinity and their own transfer receipts.The model is sufficiently general to yield two often-discussed but competing theories as special cases. If the parties are equally effective in delivering transfers to any group, the outcome of the process conforms to the `swing voter' theory: both parties woo the politically-central groups most responsive to economic favours. If groups have party affiliations and each party is more effective in delivering favours to its own support group, we can get the `machine politics' outcome, where each party dispenses favour to its core support group. But in some circumstances the machine may find it advantageous to tax its core and use the proceeds to win the support of other voters.

Keywords: Interest Group; Machine Politics; Restribution; Swing Voters (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: Written
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP1054.asp (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1054

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP1054.asp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Address: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 53--56 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DG
Series data maintained by ().