Evolutionary Voter Sophistication and Political Business Cycles

Motoshi Suzuki

Public Choice, 1994, vol. 81, issue 3-4, 61 pages

Abstract: The concept of the sophisticated electorate is central to many contemporary political economic models. However, no existing studies have yet clarified how voters could develop a sophisticated way of evaluating economic performance. This study suggests a transitional hypothesis that removes the constraint that voters have prior knowledge about the macroeconomic environment and the true economic intent of the incumbent government. The hypothesis permits behavioral innovation from learning and predicts that the evolutionary process toward sophistication may be triggered by socially suboptimal political business cycles that reveal the self-serving characteristic of the government. The empirical analyses using recent Japanese experiences show that Japanese political support behavior shifted from naivete to sophistication in the early 1970s after political manipulation occurred in the 1969 and 1972 parliamentary elections. Copyright 1994 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1994
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:kap:pubcho:v:81:y:1994:i:3-4:p:241-61

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().