Demagogues and the Fragility of Democracy

Dan Bernhardt, Stefan Krasa and Mehdi Shadmehr
Additional contact information
Mehdi Shadmehr: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

QAPEC Discussion Papers from Quantitative and Analytical Political Economy Research Centre

Abstract: We investigate the susceptibility of Democracy to demagogues, studying tensions between representatives who guard voters’ long-run interests and demagogues who cater to voters’ short-run desires. Parties propose consumption and investment. Voters base choices on current-period consumption and valence shocks. Younger/poorer economies and economically-disadvantaged voters are attracted to the demagogue’s dis-investment policies, forcing far-sighted representatives to mimic them. This electoral competition can destroy democracy: if capital falls below a critical level, a death spiral ensues with capital stocks falling thereafter. We identify when economic development mitigates this risk and characterize how the death-spiral risk declines as capital grows large.

Date: 2021
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:

Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... _qapec_bernhardt.pdf

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:wrk:wqapec:05

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in QAPEC Discussion Papers from Quantitative and Analytical Political Economy Research Centre Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Margaret Nash ().