 On political ambiguity and anti-median platformsJuha Tolvanen European Economic Review, 2024, vol. 170, issue C Abstract: This paper constructs a new, information-based explanation for political ambiguity and the success of anti-median platforms. It argues that voters’ and candidates’ correlated preferences about the appropriate policy combined with ambiguous platforms can help candidates with non-median preferences increase their support and even win against a median candidate. I show how ambiguity can arise in a standard citizen-candidate setting where voters have different preferences, in its extension with primaries, and even in a Condorcet jury model where disagreement arises only from differences in voters’ information. The paper also offers a formal framework that allows for dog whistle politics. The model illustrates how ambiguity can have important negative welfare implications. Specifically, I show that despite having ex-ante identical preferences with voters, politicians may choose ambiguous platforms even if voters would be keen on banning them. Keywords: Political ambiguity; Citizen-candidate; Condorcet voting; Dog whistle politics (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:170:y:2024:i:c:s0014292124002137 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104884 Access Statistics for this article European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier |
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