Politicians’ Motivation, Political Culture, and Electoral Competition

Klaas Beniers and Robert Dur

No 1228, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We study electoral competition among politicians who are heterogeneous both in competence and in how much they care about (what they perceive as) the public interest relative to the private rents from being in office. We show that politicians’ incentives to behave opportunistically increase with politicians’ pay and with polarization of policy preferences. Moreover, politicians may have stronger incentives to behave opportunistically if other politicians are more likely to behave opportunistically. A political culture may therefore be selfreinforcing and multiple equilibria may arise. Lastly, we show that the mere probability that politicians care about the public interest enables opportunistic politicians to damage the reputation of their competitors. Consequently, efficient policies may be reversed.

Keywords: politicians' motivation; politicians' pay; political culture; electoral competition; coalition governments; reputation bashing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Politicians’ motivation, political culture, and electoral competition (2007)
Working Paper: Politicians' Motivation, Political Culture, and Electoral Competition (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1228

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