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Campaigning and Ambiguity when Parties Cannot Make Credible Election Promises

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  • Westermark, Andreas

    (Uppsala University)

Abstract

This paper studies a model of how political parties use resources for campaigning to inform voters. Each party has a predetermined ideology drawn from some distribution. Parties choose a platform and campaign to inform voters about the platform. We find that, the farther away parties are from each other (on average), the less resources are spent on campaigning (on average). Thus, if parties are extreme, less information is supplied than if parties are moderate. We also show that if a public subsidy is introduced, we have policy convergence, given some mild technical restrictions on the public subsidy.

Suggested Citation

  • Westermark, Andreas, 2001. "Campaigning and Ambiguity when Parties Cannot Make Credible Election Promises," Working Paper Series 568, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0568
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political Parties; Campaigning;

    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
    • D89 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Other

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