Hierarchies and Promotions in Political Institutions: Accountability and Selection

B. Pablo Montagnes (), Stephane Wolton and Junyan Jiang
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B. Pablo Montagnes: Department of Political Science, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA
Stephane Wolton: Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
Junyan Jiang: Department of Political Science, Columbia University, 420 W 118th St, New York, NY 10027, USA

Games, 2025, vol. 16, issue 4, 1-24

Abstract: Hierarchies are common in political settings. From judges to elected politicians, as well as from activists to bureaucrats, political agents compete for promotion to higher positions. This paper studies political tournaments and their impact on two aspects of political performance: accountability and selection. While larger tournaments discourage effort, they improve selection. We also discuss the optimal design of tournaments as a function of the principal’s objectives and the features of the environment. We find that tournaments of size two (such as two-candidate elections) are generally suboptimal. Our analysis also highlights that increased desirability of promotion always increases effort but can reduce the optimal tournament size under certain conditions. We also present a range of other comparative statics.

Keywords: political hierarchies; tournaments; accountability and selection; political institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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