Competitive Elections, Incumbency Advantage,and Accountability

Jan Klingelhöfer ()
Additional contact information
Jan Klingelhöfer: Center for Financial Development and Stability at Henan University, and School of Economics at Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan

No 2019/8, CFDS Discussion Paper Series from Center for Financial Development and Stability at Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan, China

Abstract: I present a model of repeated electoral competition between two parties. Parts of the electorate vote retrospectively and consider the amount of rent-seeking by the incumbent party, while the prospective voters follow probabilistic party preferences when casting their votes. I show that it is possible to distinguish the effects of incumbency advantage and electoral punishment on the minimum level of rent-seeking that is consistent with equilibrium. As long as there is electoral punishment for excessive rent-seeking, a larger incumbency advantage increases accountability by decreasing the minimum amount of rent-seeking consistent with equilibrium. The reason is that the larger the incumbency advantage is, the more important is the result of the next election for all future election outcomes. Consequently, the incumbent party is willing to give up more rent-seeking opportunities to improve its electoral prospects.

Keywords: Incumbency Advantage; Accountability; Competitive Elections; Probabilistic voting; Rent-seeking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2019-07
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:

Downloads: (external link)
http://cfds.henuecon.education/images/dpaper/WP_8_2019_Competitive_Elections.pdf First version, 2019 (application/pdf)

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:fds:dpaper:201908

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CFDS Discussion Paper Series from Center for Financial Development and Stability at Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan, China Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kerstin El-Shagi ().