IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_8357.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Moral Hazard in Electoral Teams

Author

Listed:
  • Gary W. Cox
  • Jon H. Fiva
  • Daniel M. Smith
  • Rune J. Sørensen

Abstract

How do parties motivate candidates to exert effort in closed-list elections? If each candidate’s primary goal is winning a seat, then those in safe and hopeless list positions have weak incentives to campaign. We present a model in which (i) candidates care about both legislative seats and the higher offices available when their party enters government; and (ii) parties commit to allocating higher offices monotonically with list rank. This model predicts that the volume and geo-diversity of candidates’ campaign efforts will increase as their list rank improves. Using new data cover-ing Norwegian parliamentary candidates’ use of mass and social media during the 2017 election, we find clear support for this prediction. As their list rank increases, candidates shift from intra-district to extra-district media exposure—which cannot help them win their own seats; but can improve their party’s chance of entering government, and thus their own potential share of the spoils.

Suggested Citation

  • Gary W. Cox & Jon H. Fiva & Daniel M. Smith & Rune J. Sørensen, 2020. "Moral Hazard in Electoral Teams," CESifo Working Paper Series 8357, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8357
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp8357.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 1995. "Incumbent Behavior: Vote-Seeking, Tax-Setting, and Yardstick Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 25-45, March.
    2. Meredith, Marc, 2013. "Exploiting Friends-and-Neighbors to Estimate Coattail Effects," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 107(4), pages 742-765, November.
    3. Jaakko Meriläinen & Janne Tukiainen, 2018. "Rank effects in political promotions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 87-109, October.
    4. Vincent Pons & Clémence Tricaud, 2018. "Expressive Voting and Its Cost: Evidence From Runoffs With Two or Three Candidates," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1621-1649, September.
    5. Fiva, Jon H. & Halse, Askill H. & Smith, Daniel M., 2021. "Local Representation and Voter Mobilization in Closed-list Proportional Representation Systems," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 16(2), pages 185-213, February.
    6. Thomas Fujiwara & Carlos Sanz, 2020. "Rank Effects in Bargaining: Evidence from Government Formation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(3), pages 1261-1295.
    7. Claudio Ferraz & Frederico Finan, 2011. "Electoral Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from the Audits of Local Governments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1274-1311, June.
    8. Timothy Besley & Olle Folke & Torsten Persson & Johanna Rickne, 2017. "Gender Quotas and the Crisis of the Mediocre Man: Theory and Evidence from Sweden," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(8), pages 2204-2242, August.
    9. Sanz, Carlos, 2017. "The Effect of Electoral Systems on Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(4), pages 689-710, October.
    10. Leiserson, Michael, 1968. "Factions and Coalitions in One-Party Japan: An Interpretation Based on the Theory of Games," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(3), pages 770-787, September.
    11. 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.
    12. Royce Carroll & Gary W. Cox, 2007. "The Logic of Gamson's Law: Pre‐election Coalitions and Portfolio Allocations," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(2), pages 300-313, April.
    13. Yoshikuni Ono, 2012. "Portfolio Allocation as Leadership Strategy: Intraparty Bargaining in Japan," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(3), pages 553-567, July.
    14. Crutzen, Benoît S Y & Flamand, Sabine & Sahuguet, Nicolas, 2020. "A model of a team contest, with an application to incentives under list proportional representation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    15. Hangartner, Dominik & Ruiz, Nelson A. & Tukiainen, Janne, 2019. "Open or Closed? How List Type Affects Electoral Performance, Candidate Selection, and Campaign Effort," Working Papers 120, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    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. Crutzen, Benoît S. Y. & Konishi, Hideo & Sahuguet, Nicolas, 2024. "The best at the top? Candidate ranking strategies under closed list proportional representation," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 706-728, October.
    2. Benoit S Y Crutzen & Hideo Konishi & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2021. "The Best at the Top? Candidate Ranking Strategies Under Closed List Proportional Representation," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 21-039/VII, Tinbergen Institute.

    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. Cox, Gary W. & Fiva, Jon H. & Smith, Daniel M. & Sørensen, Rune J., 2021. "Moral hazard in electoral teams: List rank and campaign effort," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    2. Gonzalez-Eiras, Martín & Sanz, Carlos, 2021. "Women’s representation in politics: The effect of electoral systems," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    3. Vukovic, Vuk, 2011. "Political agency model of persistent electoral success with endogenous rents," MPRA Paper 39085, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 25 Jan 2012.
    4. Gouvêa, Raphael & Girardi, Daniele, 2021. "Partisanship and local fiscal policy: Evidence from Brazilian cities," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    5. Nobuhiro Mizuno & Ryosuke Okazawa, 2022. "Why do voters elect less qualified candidates?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 34(3), pages 443-477, July.
    6. Crutzen, Benoît S.Y. & Sahuguet, Nicolas, 2023. "Comparative politics with intraparty candidate selection," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    7. Thomas Fujiwara & Carlos Sanz, 2020. "Rank Effects in Bargaining: Evidence from Government Formation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(3), pages 1261-1295.
    8. Rafael Hortala-Vallve & Jaakko Meriläinen & Janne Tukiainen, 2024. "Pre-electoral coalitions and the distribution of political power," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 198(1), pages 47-67, January.
    9. Matteo Cervellati & Giorgio Gulino & Paolo Roberti, 2024. "Random Votes to Parties and Policies in Coalition Governments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 92(5), pages 1553-1588, September.
    10. Bennett, Daniel L. & Long, Jason T., 2019. "Is it the economic policy, stupid? Economic policy, political parties & the gubernatorial incumbent advantage," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 118-137.
    11. Jon H. Fiva & Oda Nedregård & Henning Øien, 2021. "Polarization in Parliamentary Speech," CESifo Working Paper Series 8818, CESifo.
    12. Konstantinos Matakos & Riikka Savolainen & Orestis Troumpounis & Janne Tukiainen & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2024. "Electoral Institutions and Intraparty Cohesion," Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(4), pages 883-916.
    13. Benjamin Marx & Vincent Pons & Vincent Rollet, 2022. "Electoral Turnovers," NBER Working Papers 29766, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Thushyanthan Baskaran & Sonia Bhalotra & Brian Min & Yogesh Uppal, 2024. "Women legislators and economic performance," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 151-214, June.
    15. Bernecker, Andreas, 2014. "Do politicians shirk when reelection is certain? Evidence from the German parliament," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 55-70.
    16. Thomas Braendle & Alois Stutzer, 2017. "Voters and Representatives: How Should Representatives Be Selected?," CREMA Working Paper Series 2017-05, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    17. Mattozzi, Andrea & Snowberg, Erik, 2018. "The right type of legislator: A theory of taxation and representation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 54-65.
    18. Benoît Le Maux, 2009. "Governmental behavior in representative democracy: a synthesis of the theoretical literature," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 447-465, December.
    19. 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.
    20. George Ward, 2015. "Is Happiness a Predictor of Election Results?," CEP Discussion Papers dp1343, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    party lists; cabinet promotion; Gamson’s law; proportional representation; voter mobilization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ces:ceswps:_8357. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.