IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmic/v4y2012i2p27-49.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ideologues Beat Idealists

Author

Listed:
  • Sambuddha Ghosh
  • Vinayak Tripathi

Abstract

Our model considers a majority election between two candidates—an ideologue committed to a fixed policy and an idealist who implements the ex post choice of the majority. Voters are aware that their individual rankings of policies may change after the election according to common or idiosyncratic shocks. We show that in equilibrium the ideologue often beats the idealist, even when this choice hurts all voters. Inefficiency arises both for sincere and for strategic voters; we also show that it is more pervasive in the latter case. Groups may be inflexible even when each individual has a preference for flexibility. (JEL C72, D72)

Suggested Citation

  • Sambuddha Ghosh & Vinayak Tripathi, 2012. "Ideologues Beat Idealists," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 27-49, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:4:y:2012:i:2:p:27-49
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.4.2.27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.4.2.27
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cukierman, Alex & Tommasi, Mariano, 1998. "When Does It Take a Nixon to Go to China?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 180-197, March.
    2. Fernandez, Raquel & Rodrik, Dani, 1991. "Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1146-1155, December.
    3. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    4. Bruno Strulovici, 2010. "Learning While Voting: Determinants of Collective Experimentation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(3), pages 933-971, May.
    5. Eric Maskin & Jean Tirole, 2004. "The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1034-1054, September.
    6. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    7. Samuelson, William & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1988. "Status Quo Bias in Decision Making," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 7-59, March.
    8. Stephen Coate & Michael Conlin, 2004. "A Group Rule–Utilitarian Approach to Voter Turnout: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1476-1504, December.
    9. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita & Amanda Friedenberg, 2011. "Ideologues Or Pragmatists?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(5), pages 931-951, October.
    10. Meirowitz, Adam, 2006. "Designing Institutions to Aggregate Preferences and Information," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 1(4), pages 373-392, October.
    11. Ingemar Hansson & Charles Stuart, 1984. "Voting competitions with interested politicians: Platforms do not converge to the preferences of the median voter," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 431-441, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sasso, Greg & Morelli, Massimo, 2021. "Bureaucrats under Populism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    2. Jianan Wang, 2021. "Evidence and fully revealing deliberation with non-consequentialist jurors," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 189(3), pages 515-531, December.
    3. Gratton, Gabriele, 2014. "Pandering and electoral competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 163-179.
    4. Jianan Wang, 2022. "Partially verifiable deliberation in voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 190(3), pages 457-481, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Micael Castanheira & Gaëtan Nicodème & Paola Profeta, 2012. "On the political economics of tax reforms: survey and empirical assessment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(4), pages 598-624, August.
    2. Xie, Yinxi & Xie, Yang, 2017. "Machiavellian experimentation," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 685-711.
    3. Elena Panova, 2011. "A Passion for Democracy," CIRANO Working Papers 2011s-47, CIRANO.
    4. Andrea Baranzini & Stefano Carattini & Linda Tesauro, 2021. "Designing Effective and Acceptable Road Pricing Schemes: Evidence from the Geneva Congestion Charge," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 79(3), pages 417-482, July.
    5. Gersbach, Hans & Jackson, Matthew O. & Muller, Philippe & Tejada, Oriol, 2023. "Electoral competition with costly policy changes: A dynamic perspective," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    6. Ingela Alger & Jean-François Laslier, 2022. "Homo moralis goes to the voting booth: Coordination and information aggregation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 34(2), pages 280-312, April.
    7. Micael Castanheira & Gaëtan Nicodème & Paola Profeta, 2012. "On the political economics of tax reforms: survey and empirical assessment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(4), pages 598-624, August.
    8. Gabriele Gratton, 2011. "Pandering, Faith and Electoral Competition," Discussion Papers 2012-22, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    9. Anand, Kartik & Gai, Prasanna & König, Philipp Johann, 2020. "Leaping into the dark: A theory of policy gambles," Discussion Papers 07/2020, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    10. Antony Millner & Hélène Ollivier, 2016. "Beliefs, Politics, and Environmental Policy," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 10(2), pages 226-244.
    11. McMurray, Joseph, 2022. "Polarization and pandering in common-interest elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 150-161.
    12. Chun-chieh Wang, 2012. "Expressive voting, vanishing moderate voters, and divergent ideologies," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(4), pages 2727-2733.
    13. Ginzburg, Boris & Guerra, José-Alberto, 2019. "When collective ignorance is bliss: Theory and experiment on voting for learning," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 52-64.
    14. Tim Willems, 2013. "Political Accountability and Policy Experimentation: Why to Elect Left-Handed Politicians?," Economics Series Working Papers 647, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    15. Ricardo Alonso & Odilon Câmara, 2016. "Persuading Voters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(11), pages 3590-3605, November.
    16. Sourav Bhattacharya, 2013. "Condorcet Jury Theorem in a Spatial Model of Elections," Working Paper 517, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Nov 2013.
    17. Friedrich Heinemann & Michael Förg & Eva Jonas & Eva Traut‐Mattausch, 2008. "Psychologische Restriktionen wirtschaftspolitischer Reformen," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 9(4), pages 383-404, November.
    18. Lubos Pástor & Pietro Veronesi, 2012. "Uncertainty about Government Policy and Stock Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(4), pages 1219-1264, August.
    19. Sumon Majumdar & Sharun W. Mukand, 2004. "Policy Gambles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1207-1222, September.
    20. Hofer, Katharina E. & Marti, Christian & Bütler, Monika, 2017. "Ready to reform: How popular initiatives can be successful," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 16-39.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:4:y:2012:i:2:p:27-49. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.