Seniority, Information and Electoral Accountability

Cortney Rodet

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper addresses the impact information has on electoral accountability in a legislative system based on seniority using laboratory experiments. A purely rational choice perspective of a simple voting environment implies that information is inconsequential when seniority is exceptionally valuable. Seniority advantage presents the opportunity to shirk at the expense of voters. I contrast the rational choice perspective to behavioral considerations of trust, betrayal and expectations. Voter information about incumbent behavior is varied across experimental treatments, and I find that information leads to accountability when voters can compare their own incumbent’s behavior to the behavior of others. Moreover, information deters incumbent shirking.

Keywords: voting; experiments; information; seniority; principal-agent (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 D72 D89 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-08
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:49863

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