Why Only Nixon Could Go to China

Tyler Cowen and Daniel Sutter

Public Choice, 1998, vol. 97, issue 4, 605-15

Abstract: Right-wing politicians sometimes can implement policies that left-wing politicians cannot, and vice versa. Contemporary wisdom has it that 'only Nixon could have gone to China.' The authors develop a model to explain this phenomenon. A policy issue could depend on information, on which every one could potentially agree on policy, or on values, on which agreement is impossible. Politicians, who value both reelection and policy outcomes, realize the nature of the issue, whereas voters do not. Only a right-wing president can credibly signal the desirability of a left-wing course of action. The Nixon paradox can hold then if citizens vote retrospectively on the issue. Copyright 1998 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0048-5829/contents link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:97:y:1998:i:4:p:605-15

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 ().