IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/shr/wpaper/12-04.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effect of Party Discipline on the Electoral Accountability of Politicians

Author

Listed:
  • Nicolas-Guillaume Martineau

    (Département d'économique and GRÉDI, Université de Sherbrooke)

Abstract

This essay examines the influence of a politician's party on her accountability to the electorate. It also considers what the conjectured waning of political parties may imply for the effectiveness of elections in disciplining politicians, and for voter welfare. The paper models the election mechanism as a principal-agent relationship between the representative voter (principal) and the politician in office (agent). The party is heterogeneous, composed of factions whose preferences over policy differ. It may coerce the politician by threatening to remove her from the party's helm following certain policy choices. The main result is that putschist threats, despite being a distortion when the electoral mechanism is functioning well, can be welfare-enhancing in the presence of another distortion on the electoral mechanism. This serves to contribute to a theory of the political second-best.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicolas-Guillaume Martineau, 2012. "The Effect of Party Discipline on the Electoral Accountability of Politicians," Cahiers de recherche 12-04, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    • Handle: RePEc:shr:wpaper:12-04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://gredi.recherche.usherbrooke.ca/wpapers/GREDI-1204.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John E. Roemer, 1999. "The Democratic Political Economy of Progressive Income Taxation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(1), pages 1-20, January.
    2. Micael Castanheira & Benoît Crutzen & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2010. "The Impact of Party Organization on Electoral Outcomes," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 61(4), pages 677-695.
    3. Caillaud, B. & Tirole, J., 1999. "Party governance and ideological bias," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 779-789, April.
    4. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    5. Lee, David & Saez, Emmanuel, 2012. "Optimal minimum wage policy in competitive labor markets," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 739-749.
    6. Robert Barro, 1973. "The control of politicians: An economic model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 19-42, March.
    7. Bruce C. Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1986. "Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(2), pages 229-264.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Klaas Beniers & Robert Dur, 2007. "Politicians’ motivation, political culture, and electoral competition," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 14(1), pages 29-54, February.
    2. Bierbrauer, Felix J. & Boyer, Pierre C., 2013. "Political competition and Mirrleesian income taxation: A first pass," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-14.
    3. Zudenkova, Galina, 2012. "A rationale for intra-party democracy," MPRA Paper 39091, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Scott Gehlbach & Konstantin Sonin & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2010. "Businessman Candidates," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 718-736, July.
    7. Dalle Nogare, Chiara & Kauder, Björn, 2017. "Term limits for mayors and intergovernmental grants: Evidence from Italian cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-11.
    8. Aggeborn, Linuz & Persson, Lovisa, 2017. "Public Finance and Right-Wing Populism," Working Paper Series 1182, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    9. Laurent Bouton & Paola Conconi & Francisco Pino & Maurizio Zanardi, 2018. "Guns, Environment, and Abortion: How Single-Minded Voters Shape Politicians' Decisions," Working Papers gueconwpa~18-18-15, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
    10. Christian Schultz, 2003. "Information, Polarization and Delegation in Democracy," CESifo Working Paper Series 1104, CESifo.
    11. Lagunoff, Roger, 2006. "Credible communication in dynastic government," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 59-86, January.
    12. 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).
    13. Gilles Saint‐Paul & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2016. "A Theory of Political Entrenchment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(593), pages 1238-1263, June.
    14. Umeno, Luis Gustavo & Bugarin, Maurício Soares, 2008. "Electoral Control in the Presence of Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 28(1), May.
    15. Martin Gassebner & Richard Jong‐A‐Pin & Jochen O. Mierau, 2011. "Terrorism And Cabinet Duration," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1253-1270, November.
    16. Magris, Francesco & Russo, Giuseppe, 2016. "Fiscal Revenues and Commitment in Immigration Amnesties," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 75-90.
    17. Britto, Diogo G.C. & Fiorin, Stefano, 2020. "Corruption and legislature size: Evidence from Brazil," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    18. Francesco Drago & Roberto Galbiati & Francesco Sobbrio, 2020. "The Political Cost of Being Soft on Crime: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(6), pages 3305-3336.
    19. Juan Carlos Berganza, 1998. "Relationships Between Politicians and Voters Through Elections: A Review Essay," Working Papers wp1998_9809, CEMFI.
    20. Vergne, Clémence, 2009. "Democracy, elections and allocation of public expenditures in developing countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 63-77, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    political agency; factions; accountability; political parties; ideology; voter welfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • H10 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - General

    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:shr:wpaper:12-04. 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: Jean-François Rouillard (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deushca.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.