The Voters' Curses: Why We Need Goldilocks Voters

Carlo Prato and Stephane Wolton ()

American Journal of Political Science, 2016, vol. 60, issue 3, 726-737

Abstract: Scholars have long deplored voters' lack of interest in politics and argued in favor of greater political engagement. We present a formal theory of elections where successful communication of campaign messages requires both effort by candidates and attention from voters. Voters' interest in politics affects their attention and impacts the effectiveness of the electoral process as a screening and disciplining device. In line with existing theories, there exists a curse of the uninterested voter: When voters have little interest in politics, the electoral process performs poorly, and voters' attention to politics is low. Surprisingly, we uncover a curse of the interested voter, by which the same happens when voters have a strong interest in politics. Our results highlight the importance of distinguishing between voters' interest and attention, two notions often conflated in empirical studies. Moreover, policy interventions aimed at subsidizing the cost of acquiring political information can have unintended consequences.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12223

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:wly:amposc:v:60:y:2016:i:3:p:726-737

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().