The Cost of Ruling, Cabinet Duration, and the "Median-Gap" Model

Randolph T Stevenson

Public Choice, 2002, vol. 113, issue 1-2, 157-78

Abstract: In a recent article Paldam and Skott (1995) provide a theoretical explanation for an important empirical phenomenon in democratic countries: incumbent governments tend to lose votes. In this paper, I show that Paldam and Skott's theoretical explanation for this "cost of ruling" is potentially much stronger than they recognize. Specifically, when generalized in a straightforward way, their model explains not only the cost of ruling itself, but also a second well established empirical fact: that the longer an incumbent government has been in power, the more votes it loses. Further, this generalization of the model produces two additional empirical hypotheses that have not yet been tested in the empirical literature. Copyright 2002 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 2002
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