IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v53y1987i3p201-219.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Median voters, political systems and public policies: An empirical test

Author

Listed:
  • George Boyne

Abstract

This paper tests the median voter hypothesis that variations in policies across political systems are caused by variations in median voter preferences. The context of the empirical analysis is the tax policies of three groups of sub-national governments in England in three time periods. The results of a median voter model of tax policy variation are compared to the results of a mean voter model in different party systems and different electoral systems. The evidence provides little support for the median voter hypothesis. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1987

Suggested Citation

  • George Boyne, 1987. "Median voters, political systems and public policies: An empirical test," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 201-219, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:53:y:1987:i:3:p:201-219
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00127346
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00127346
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00127346?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. Bergstrom, Theodore C & Goodman, Robert P, 1973. "Private Demands for Public Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(3), pages 280-296, June.
    2. Comanor, William S., 1976. "The median voter rule and the theory of political choice," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1-2), pages 169-177.
    3. Romer, Thomas & Rosenthal, Howard, 1979. "The elusive median voter," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 143-170, October.
    4. David Sjoquist, 1981. "A median voter analysis of variations in the use of property taxes among local governments," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 273-285, January.
    5. Hirschel Kasper, 1971. "On political competition, economic policy, and income maintenance programs," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 1-19, March.
    6. Werner W. Pommerehne & Bruno S. Frey, 1976. "Two Approaches To Estimating Public Expenditures," Public Finance Review, , vol. 4(4), pages 395-407, October.
    7. 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.
    8. Richard Wagner, 1976. "Revenue structure, fiscal illusion, and budgetary choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 45-61, March.
    9. Robert Inman, 1978. "Testing political economy’s ‘as if’ proposition: is the median income voter really decisive?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 45-65, December.
    10. Romer, Thomas & Rosenthal, Howard, 1982. "Median Voters or Budget Maximizers: Evidence from School Expenditure Referenda," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 20(4), pages 556-578, October.
    11. Dunleavy, Patrick & Ward, Hugh, 1981. "Exogenous Voter Preferences and Parties with State Power: Some Internal Problems of Economic Theories of Party Competition," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(3), pages 351-380, July.
    12. Toye, J. F. J., 1976. "Economic Theories of Politics and Public Finance," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(4), pages 433-447, October.
    13. Werner W. Pommerehne & Friedrich Schneider*, 1978. "Fiscal Illusion, Political Institutions, And Local Public Spending," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 381-408, August.
    14. Holcombe, Randall G, 1980. "An Empirical Test of the Median Voter Model," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 18(2), pages 260-274, April.
    15. Boyne, George A., 1985. "Theory, Methodology and Results in Political Science – The Case of Output Studies," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(4), pages 473-515, October.
    16. Lovell, Michael C, 1978. "Spending for Education: The Exercise of Public Choice," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(4), pages 487-495, November.
    17. Davis, Otto A. & Hinich, Melvin J. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1970. "An Expository Development of a Mathematical Model of the Electoral Process," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 64(2), pages 426-448, June.
    18. Wolman, Harold, 1983. "Understanding Local Government Responses to Fiscal Pressure: a Cross National Analysis," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(3), pages 245-263, August.
    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. George A. Boyne, 1996. "Competition and Local Government: A Public Choice Perspective," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 33(4-5), pages 703-721, May.
    2. Kim, Jonghoon & Jeong, Hyeong-Chai & Baek, Seung Ki, 2022. "Symmetric Nash equilibrium of political polarization in a two-party system," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 607(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. Rhee, Se-Koo, 1996. "The impact of intergovernmental grants-in-aid on public school expenditure under the segregated school system," ISU General Staff Papers 1996010108000012396, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    2. Randall Holcombe, 1989. "The median voter model in public choice theory," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 115-125, May.
    3. John Bradbury & W. Crain, 2005. "Legislative district configurations and fiscal policy in American States," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 125(3), pages 385-407, December.
    4. Rodney Fort, 1988. "The median voter, setters, and non-repeated construction bond issues," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 213-231, March.
    5. Brian Dollery & Andrew Worthington, 1999. "Fiscal Illusion at the Local Level: An Empirical Test Using Australian Municipal Data," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 75(1), pages 37-48, March.
    6. Eric J. Brunner & Stephen L. Ross, 2007. "How Decisive Is the Decisive Voter?," Working papers 2007-28, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Aug 2008.
    7. John Jackson, 2014. "Location, location, location: the Davis-Hinich model of electoral competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 197-218, April.
    8. Marc Baudry & Matthieu Leprince & Cyriaque Moreau, 2002. "Préférences révélées, bien public local et électeur médian : tests sur données françaises," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 156(5), pages 125-146.
    9. Eric J. Brunner & Stephen L. Ross, 2009. "Is the Median Voter Decisive? Evidence of 'Ends Against the Middle' From Referenda Voting Patterns," Working papers 2009-02, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised May 2010.
    10. Roberto Dell'Anno & Morena De Stefano, 2014. "Un indicatore sintetico dell?Illusione Finanziaria. Un tentativo di stima per l?Italia," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2014(1), pages 65-92.
    11. Aronsson, Thomas & Wikstrom, Magnus, 1996. "Local public expenditure in Sweden a model where the median voter is not necessarily decisive," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(9), pages 1705-1716, December.
    12. James Alm & Abel Embaye, 2010. "Explaining The Growth Of Government Spending In South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 78(2), pages 152-169, June.
    13. Sharon Megdal, 1983. "The determination of local public expenditures and the principal and agent relation: A case study," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 71-87, January.
    14. John Akin & Michael Lea, 1982. "Microdata estimation of school expenditure levels: An alternative to the median voter approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 113-128, January.
    15. Magnus Henrekson & Johan Lybeck, 1988. "Explaining the growth of government in Sweden: A disequilibrium approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 213-232, June.
    16. Rodolfo Gonzalez & Stephen Mehay, 1985. "Bureaucracy and the divisibility of local public output," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 89-101, January.
    17. Geoffrey K. Turnbull & Chinkun Chang, 1998. "The Median Voter According to GARP," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 1001-1010, April.
    18. Andrew Abbott & Philip Jones, 2016. "Fiscal Illusion and Cyclical Government Expenditure: State Government Expenditure in the United States," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 63(2), pages 177-193, May.
    19. G. Tridimas*, 1985. "Budget Deficits and the Growth of Public Expenditure in South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 53(4), pages 251-257, December.
    20. Daniel Ingberman, 1985. "Running against the status quo: Institutions for direct democracy referenda and allocations over time," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 19-43, January.

    More about this item

    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:kap:pubcho:v:53:y:1987:i:3:p:201-219. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.