IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmic/v6y2014i4p203-36.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Voter Preferences, Polarization, and Electoral Policies

Author

Listed:
  • Yuichiro Kamada Jr.
  • Fuhito Kojima Jr.

Abstract

In most variants of the Hotelling-Downs model of election, it is assumed that voters have concave utility functions. This assumption is arguably justified in issues such as economic policies, but convex utilities are perhaps more appropriate in others such as moral or religious issues. In this paper we analyze the implications of convex utility functions in a two-candidate probabilistic voting model with a polarized voter distribution. We show that the equilibrium policies diverge if and only if voters' utility function is sufficiently convex. If two or more issues are involved, policies converge in "concave issues" and diverge in "convex issues"

Suggested Citation

  • Yuichiro Kamada Jr. & Fuhito Kojima Jr., 2014. "Voter Preferences, Polarization, and Electoral Policies," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 203-236, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:6:y:2014:i:4:p:203-36
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.6.4.203
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.6.4.203
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/mic/ds/0604/2013-0142_ds.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin J. Osborne, 1995. "Spatial Models of Political Competition under Plurality Rule: A Survey of Some Explanations of the Number of Candidates and the Positions They Take," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 28(2), pages 261-301, May.
    2. Edward L. Glaeser & Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2005. "Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(4), pages 1283-1330.
    3. Chad Kendall & Tommaso Nannicini & Francesco Trebbi, 2015. "How Do Voters Respond to Information? Evidence from a Randomized Campaign," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 322-353, January.
    4. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2002. "Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262661314, April.
    5. Yang, C C, 1995. "Endogenous Tariff Formation under Representative Democracy: A Probabilistic Voting Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 956-963, September.
    6. 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.
    7. Aragones, Enriqueta & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2002. "Mixed Equilibrium in a Downsian Model with a Favored Candidate," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 131-161, March.
    8. Gul, Faruk & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 2009. "Partisan politics and election failure with ignorant voters," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 146-174, January.
    9. Azrieli, Yaron, 2011. "Axioms for Euclidean preferences with a valence dimension," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4-5), pages 545-553.
    10. Martin J. Osborne & Al Slivinski, 1996. "A Model of Political Competition with Citizen-Candidates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(1), pages 65-96.
    11. Hinich, Melvin J., 1977. "Equilibrium in spatial voting: The median voter result is an artifact," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 208-219, December.
    12. Thomas R. Palfrey, 1984. "Spatial Equilibrium with Entry," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(1), pages 139-156.
    13. Steven Callander, 2005. "Electoral Competition in Heterogeneous Districts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(5), pages 1116-1145, October.
    14. Alesina, Alberto, 1988. "Credibility and Policy Convergence in a Two-Party System with Rational Voters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 796-805, September.
    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. Hallman, Alice & Spiro, Daniel, 2023. "A theory of hypocrisy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 401-410.
    2. Daisuke Hirata & Yuichiro Kamada, 2020. "Extreme donors and policy convergence," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 55(1), pages 149-176, June.
    3. Chen, Daniel L. & Michaeli, Moti & Spiro, Daniel, 2016. "Ideological Perfectionism," IAST Working Papers 16-47, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    4. James Rockey & Nadia Zakir, 2021. "Power and the money, money and the power: A network analysis of donations from American corporate to political leaders," Discussion Papers 21-03, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    5. Enriqueta Aragonès & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2017. "Imperfectly Informed Voters And Strategic Extremism," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(2), pages 439-471, May.
    6. Dimitrios Xefteris & Galina Zudenkova, 2018. "Electoral competition under costly policy implementation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(4), pages 721-739, April.
    7. Razvan Vlaicu, 2018. "Inequality, participation, and polarization," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(4), pages 597-624, April.
    8. Robert Grafstein, 2018. "The problem of polarization," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 315-340, July.
    9. Cheung, Man-Wah & Wu, Jiabin, 2018. "On the probabilistic transmission of continuous cultural traits," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 300-323.
    10. Tomoya Tajika, 2021. "Polarization and inefficient information aggregation under strategic voting," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 56(1), pages 67-100, January.
    11. Yasushi Asako, 2019. "Strategic Ambiguity with Probabilistic Voting," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(4), pages 626-641, October.
    12. Katharina Momsen & Markus Ohndorf, 2020. "Expressive Voting vs. Self-Serving Ignorance," Working Papers 2020-33, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    13. Antoniades, Alexis & Calomiris, Charles W., 2020. "Mortgage market credit conditions and U.S. Presidential elections," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    14. Michaeli, Moti, 2020. "Grouping, in-group bias and the cost of cheating," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 90-107.
    15. Chen, Daniel L. & Michaeli, Moti & Spiro, Daniel, 2023. "Non-confrontational extremists," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    16. Shino Takayama & Yuki Tamura & Terence Yeo, 2019. "Primaries, Strategic Voters and Heterogenous Valences," Discussion Papers Series 605, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    17. Richard Weelden, 2015. "The welfare implications of electoral polarization," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(4), pages 653-686, December.
    18. Hirata, Daisuke & 平田, 大祐 & Kamada, Yuichiro & 鎌田, 雄一郎, 2019. "Extreme Lobbyists and Policy Convergence," Discussion Papers 2019-02, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    19. Chatterjee, Somdeep & Mookerjee, Mehreen & Ojha, Manini & Roy, Sanket, 2023. "Does increased credibility of elections lead to higher political competition? Evidence from India," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    20. Alberto Grillo, 2023. "Political alienation and voter mobilization in elections," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 25(3), pages 515-531, June.
    21. Katharina Momsen & Markus Ohndorf, 2023. "Expressive voting versus information avoidance: experimental evidence in the context of climate change mitigation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 194(1), pages 45-74, January.
    22. Karakas, Leyla D. & Mitra, Devashish, 2020. "Believers vs. deniers: Climate change and environmental policy polarization," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).

    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. Stefan Krasa & Mattias Polborn, 2007. "Majority-efficiency and Competition-efficiency in a Binary Policy Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 1958, CESifo.
    2. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias K., 2012. "Political competition between differentiated candidates," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 249-271.
    3. Zakharov Alexei, 2005. "Candidate location and endogenous valence," EERC Working Paper Series 05-17e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    4. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias, 2010. "The binary policy model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 661-688, March.
    5. Paula González & Francesca Passarelli & M. Socorro Puy, 2019. "Discipline, party switching and policy divergence," Working Papers 19.05, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    6. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias, 2010. "Competition between Specialized Candidates," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 104(4), pages 745-765, November.
    7. Anja Prummer, 2016. "Spatial Advertisement in Political Campaigns," Working Papers 805, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    8. Aytimur, Emre & Boukouras, Aris & Suen, Richard M. H., 2024. "How Does Political Uncertainty Affect the Optimal Degree of Policy Divergence?," MPRA Paper 122279, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Christian Johansson & Anders Kärnä & Jaakko Meriläinen, 2023. "Vox Populi, Vox Dei? Tacit collusion in politics," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 752-772, November.
    10. Anja Prummer, 2016. "Spatial Advertisement in Political Campaigns," Working Papers 805, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    11. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    12. Tsakas, Nikolas & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2018. "Electoral competition with third party entry in the lab," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 121-134.
    13. Sengupta, Abhijit & Sengupta, Kunal, 2008. "A Hotelling-Downs model of electoral competition with the option to quit," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 661-674, March.
    14. Juan Carlos Berganza, 1998. "Relationships Between Politicians and Voters Through Elections: A Review Essay," Working Papers wp1998_9809, CEMFI.
    15. Kei Kawai & Yasutora Watanabe, 2013. "Inferring Strategic Voting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 624-662, April.
    16. Enriqueta Aragonès & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2017. "Imperfectly Informed Voters And Strategic Extremism," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 58(2), pages 439-471, May.
    17. Paul Vertier, 2018. "The democratic challenges of electoral representation and populism : an empirical approach [Les défis démocratiques de la représentation électorale et du populisme : une approche empirique]," SciencePo Working papers Main tel-03419534, HAL.
    18. César Martinelli & John Duggan, 2014. "The Political Economy of Dynamic Elections: A Survey and Some New Results," Working Papers 1403, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM.
    19. Hortala-Vallve, Rafael & Esteve-Volart, Berta, 2011. "Voter turnout and electoral competition in a multidimensional policy space," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 376-384, June.
    20. Damien Bol & Arnaud Dellis & Mandar oak, 2015. "Endogenous Candidacy in Electoral Competition: A Survey," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2015-19, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • 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:6:y:2014:i:4:p:203-36. 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.