IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jetheo/v176y2018icp232-254.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Vote-motivated candidates

Author

Listed:
  • Sorokin, Constantine
  • Zakharov, Alexei

Abstract

We study stochastic voting models where the candidates are allowed to have any smooth, strictly increasing utility functions that translate vote shares into payoffs. We find that if a strict Nash equilibrium exists in a model with an infinite number of voters, then nearby equilibria should exist for similar large, but finite, electorates. If the votes are independent random events, then equilibria will not depend on the utility functions of the candidates. Our results have implications for existing models of redistributive politics and spatial competition, as the properties of pure-strategy equilibria in such games carry over to equilibria in games with arbitrary candidate preferences. On the other hand, candidate utility functions will matter if the individual voting decisions are correlated. In the presence of aggregate uncertainty, such as changing economic conditions or political scandals, the preferences of parties and candidates with respect to shares of votes will have an effect on political competition.

Suggested Citation

  • Sorokin, Constantine & Zakharov, Alexei, 2018. "Vote-motivated candidates," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 232-254.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:176:y:2018:i:c:p:232-254
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2018.03.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053118300954
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jet.2018.03.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Moritz Heß & Christian von Scheve & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2013. "Members of German Federal Parliament More Risk-Loving Than General Population," DIW Economic Bulletin, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 3(4), pages 20-24.
    2. Assar Lindbeck & Jörgen Weibull, 1987. "Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 273-297, January.
    3. Patty, John Wiggs, 2005. "Local equilibrium equivalence in probabilistic voting models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 523-536, May.
    4. Gallagher, Michael, 1992. "Comparing Proportional Representation Electoral Systems: Quotas, Thresholds, Paradoxes and Majorities," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(4), pages 469-496, October.
    5. Simpser,Alberto, 2013. "Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107030541, January.
    6. Robinson, James A. & Torvik, Ragnar & Verdier, Thierry, 2017. "The political economy of public income volatility: With an application to the resource curse," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 243-252.
    7. Jeffrey S. Banks & John Duggan, 2005. "Probabilistic Voting in the Spatial Model of Elections: The Theory of Office-motivated Candidates," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: David Austen-Smith & John Duggan (ed.), Social Choice and Strategic Decisions, pages 15-56, Springer.
    8. McKelvey, Richard D. & Patty, John W., 2006. "A theory of voting in large elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 155-180, October.
    9. Barry Nalebuff & Ron Shachar, 1999. "Follow the Leader: Theory and Evidence on Political Participation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 525-547, June.
    10. Miller, Gary & Schofield, Norman, 2003. "Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(2), pages 245-260, May.
    11. Robinson, James A. & Torvik, Ragnar & Verdier, Thierry, 2006. "Political foundations of the resource curse," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 447-468, April.
    12. Alan S. Gerber & Dean Karlan & Daniel Bergan, 2009. "Does the Media Matter? A Field Experiment Measuring the Effect of Newspapers on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 35-52, April.
    13. John T. Gasper & Andrew Reeves, 2011. "Make It Rain? Retrospection and the Attentive Electorate in the Context of Natural Disasters," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(2), pages 340-355, April.
    14. John Ledyard, 1984. "The pure theory of large two-candidate elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 7-41, January.
    15. Norman Schofield, 2007. "The Mean Voter Theorem: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Convergent Equilibrium," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 965-980.
    16. James A. Robinson & Thierry Verdier, 2013. "The Political Economy of Clientelism," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 115(2), pages 260-291, April.
    17. Enrique Fatas & Tibor Neugebauer & Pilar Tamborero, 2007. "How Politicians Make Decisions: A Political Choice Experiment," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 92(2), pages 167-196, October.
    18. Zheng Song & Kjetil Storesletten & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2012. "Rotten Parents and Disciplined Children: A Politico‐Economic Theory of Public Expenditure and Debt," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(6), pages 2785-2803, November.
    19. Cindy D. Kam, 2012. "Risk Attitudes and Political Participation," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(4), pages 817-836, October.
    20. Galasso, Vincenzo & Nannicini, Tommaso, 2011. "Competing on Good Politicians," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(1), pages 79-99, February.
    21. Casey, Katherine, 2015. "Crossing Party Lines: The Effects of Information on Redistributive Politics," Research Papers 3299, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    22. Alexei Zakharov & Constantine Sorokin, 2014. "Policy convergence in a two-candidate probabilistic voting model," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(2), pages 429-446, August.
    23. 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.
    24. Lijphart, Arend, 1990. "The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, 1945–85," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(2), pages 481-496, June.
    25. ,, 2014. "A dynamic theory of electoral competition," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(2), May.
    26. David Stromberg, 2008. "How the Electoral College Influences Campaigns and Policy: The Probability of Being Florida," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 769-807, June.
    27. Katherine Casey, 2015. "Crossing Party Lines: The Effects of Information on Redistributive Politics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(8), pages 2410-2448, August.
    28. James M. Snyder Jr. & Michael M. Ting & Stephen Ansolabehere, 2005. "Legislative Bargaining under Weighted Voting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 981-1004, September.
    29. John Patty, 2007. "Generic difference of expected vote share and probability of victory maximization in simple plurality elections with probabilistic voters," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 29(1), pages 149-173, July.
    30. Dilip Mookherjee & Pranab K. Bardhan, 2012. "Political Clientelism and Capture: Theory and Evidence from West Bengal, India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-097, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    31. Mookherjee, Dilip & Bardhan, Pranab K., 2012. "Political Clientelism and Capture: Theory and Evidence from West Bengal, India," WIDER Working Paper Series 097, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    32. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00846558 is not listed on IDEAS
    33. Duch,Raymond M. & Stevenson,Randolph T., 2008. "The Economic Vote," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521707404, January.
    34. David Hojman, 2004. "So, Do You Really Want to Be a Senator? The Political Economy of Candidate Motivation and Electoral Defeat in Chile," Working Papers 200403, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.
    35. Alexei Zakharov, 2012. "Probabilistic voting equilibria under nonlinear candidate payoffs," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 24(2), pages 235-247, April.
    36. Duch,Raymond M. & Stevenson,Randolph T., 2008. "The Economic Vote," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521881029, 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. Giampaolo Bonomi, 2024. "Divide and Diverge: Polarization Incentives," Papers 2405.20564, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.

    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. Alexei Zakharov & Constantine Sorokin, 2014. "Policy convergence in a two-candidate probabilistic voting model," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(2), pages 429-446, August.
    2. Alexei Zakharov, 2012. "Probabilistic voting equilibria under nonlinear candidate payoffs," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 24(2), pages 235-247, April.
    3. Kamada, Yuichiro & Kojima, Fuhito, 2013. "The equivalence between costly and probabilistic voting models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 179-185.
    4. Sebastian Galiani & Norman Schofield & Gustavo Torrens, 2014. "Factor Endowments, Democracy, and Trade Policy Divergence," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 16(1), pages 119-156, February.
    5. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias K., 2012. "Political competition between differentiated candidates," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 249-271.
    6. Deborah Fletcher & Steven Slutsky, 2011. "Campaign allocations under probabilistic voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 146(3), pages 469-499, March.
    7. Ali, Amin Masud & Savoia, Antonio, 2023. "Decentralisation or patronage: What determines government's allocation of development spending in a unitary country? Evidence from Bangladesh," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    8. Leopoldo Fergusson & Horacio Larreguy & Juan Felipe Riaño, 2022. "Political Competition and State Capacity: Evidence from a Land Allocation Program in Mexico," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(648), pages 2815-2834.
    9. Marcus Berliant & Pierre C. Boyer, 2024. "Politics and income taxes: Progress and progressivity," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 26(4), August.
    10. Gutiérrez, Emilio & Meriläinen, Jaakko & Ponce de León, Máximo, 2024. "Worth a shot? The political economy of government responsiveness in times of crisis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    11. Gallego, Jorge & Li, Christopher & Wantchekon, Leonard, 2020. "Electoral Intermediaries," Working papers 45, Red Investigadores de Economía.
    12. Subhasish Dey & Kunal Sen, 2016. "Is partisan alignment electorally rewarding? Evidence from village council elections in India," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-063-16, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    13. Norman Schofield, 2007. "Modelling Politics," ICER Working Papers 33-2007, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    14. Tribin, Ana, 2020. "Chasing votes with the public budget," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    15. Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2017. "Multidimensional electoral competition between differentiated candidates," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 112-121.
    16. Donati, Dante, 2023. "Mobile Internet access and political outcomes: Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    17. Kovenock, Dan & Roberson, Brian, 2011. "Non-partisan ‘get-out-the-vote’ efforts and policy outcomes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 728-739.
    18. Bobonis, Gustavo & Gertler, Paul & Gonzalez-Navarro, Marco & Nichter, Simeon, 2023. "Does Combating Corruption Reduce Clientelism?," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt13k514pd, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    19. Marcus Pivato, 2016. "Asymptotic utilitarianism in scoring rules," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(2), pages 431-458, August.
    20. Sheahan, Megan & Liu, Yanyan & Barrett, Christopher B. & Narayanan, Sudha, 2014. "The political economy of MGNREGS spending in Andhra Pradesh:," IFPRI discussion papers 1371, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Voting; Probabilistic voting; Electoral competition; Payoff equivalence; Risk preferences;
    All these keywords.

    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:eee:jetheo:v:176:y:2018:i:c:p:232-254. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622869 .

    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.