IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pen/papers/05-021.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reputation and Rhetoric in Elections

Author

Listed:
  • Enriqueta Aragones

    (Institut d’Analisi Economica, CSIC)

  • Thomas R. Palfrey

    (Departments of Politics and Economics, Princeton University)

  • Andrew Postlewaite

    (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

We analyze conditions under which campaign rhetoric may affect the beliefs of the voters over what policy will be implemented by the winning candidate of an election. We develop a model of repeated elections with complete information in which candidates are purely ideological. We analyze an equilibrium in which voters' strategies involve a credible threat to punish candidates who renege of their campaign promises, and all campaign promises are believed by voters, and honored by candidates. We obtain that the degree to which promises are credible in equilibrium is an increasing function of the value of a candidate's reputation. We also show how the model can be extended so that rhetoric also signals candidate quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Enriqueta Aragones & Thomas R. Palfrey & Andrew Postlewaite, 2005. "Reputation and Rhetoric in Elections," PIER Working Paper Archive 05-021, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    • Handle: RePEc:pen:papers:05-021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/filevault/working-papers/05-021.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Enriqueta Aragones & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2005. "Electoral Competition Between Two Candidates of Different Quality: The Effects of Candidate Ideology and Private Information," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: David Austen-Smith & John Duggan (ed.), Social Choice and Strategic Decisions, pages 93-112, Springer.
    2. John Duggan & Mark Fey, 2006. "Repeated Downsian electoral competition," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 35(1), pages 39-69, December.
    3. Jeffrey Banks & John Duggan, 2001. "A Multidimensional Model of Repeated Elections," Wallis Working Papers WP24, University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy.
    4. 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.
    5. Banks, Jeffrey S., 1990. "A model of electoral competition with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 309-325, April.
    6. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    7. Avinash Dixit & Gene M. Grossman & Faruk Gul, 2000. "The Dynamics of Political Compromise," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 531-568, June.
    8. Joseph E. Harrington, 1992. "The Revelation Of Information Through The Electoral Process: An Exploratory Analysis," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(3), pages 255-276, November.
    9. 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. Matteo Triossi, 2006. "Reliability and Responsibility: A Theory of Endogenous Commitment," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 21, Collegio Carlo Alberto.

    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. Kalandrakis, Tasos, 2009. "A Reputational Theory of Two-Party Competition," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 4(4), pages 343-378, December.
    2. Juan Carlos Berganza, 1998. "Relationships Between Politicians and Voters Through Elections: A Review Essay," Working Papers wp1998_9809, CEMFI.
    3. 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.
    4. Andersen, Jørgen Juel & Heggedal, Tom-Reiel, 2019. "Political rents and voter information in search equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 146-168.
    5. Przeworski, Adam & Rivero, Gonzalo & Xi, Tianyang, 2015. "Elections as a conflict processing mechanism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 235-248.
    6. Banks, Jeffrey S. & Duggan, John, 2008. "A Dynamic Model of Democratic Elections in Multidimensional Policy Spaces," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 3(3), pages 269-299, October.
    7. 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.
    8. Gersbach, Hans & Jackson, Matthew O. & Muller, Philippe & Tejada, Oriol, 2023. "Electoral competition with costly policy changes: A dynamic perspective," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    9. Jason Matthew DeBacker, 2015. "Flip‐Flopping: Ideological Adjustment Costs In The United States Senate," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 108-128, January.
    10. Andina-Díaz, Ascensión & Feri, Francesco & Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A., 2021. "Institutional flexibility, political alternation, and middle-of-the-road policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    11. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9624.
    12. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
    13. Yasushi Asako, 2010. "Partially Binding Platforms: Political Promises as a Partial Commitment Device," IMES Discussion Paper Series 10-E-01, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    14. Torsten Persson & Gerard Roland & Guido Tabellini, 2000. "Comparative Politics and Public Finance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(6), pages 1121-1161, December.
    15. Alejandro Saporiti, 2008. "Existence and Uniqueness of Nash Equilibrium in Electoral Competition Games: The Hybrid Case," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(5), pages 827-857, October.
    16. Yasushi Asako, 2015. "Campaign promises as an imperfect signal: How does an extreme candidate win against a moderate candidate?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(4), pages 613-649, October.
    17. Braendle, Thomas, 2013. "Do Institutions Affect Citizens' Selection into Politics?," Working papers 2013/04, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    18. Yasushi Asako, 2015. "Partially Binding Platforms: Campaign Promises vis-à-vis Cost of Betrayal," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 66(3), pages 322-353, September.
    19. 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.
    20. Kristin Kanthak, 2002. "Top-Down Divergence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 14(3), pages 301-323, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Repeated Elections; Commitment; Reputation;
    All these keywords.

    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:pen:papers:05-021. 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: Administrator (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deupaus.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.