IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/cegedp/161.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Extreme parties and political rents

Author

Listed:
  • Aytimur, Refik Emre

Abstract

We study the rent-seeking behaviour of political parties in a proportional representation system, where the final policy choice of the parliament is a weighted average of parties' policy positions, weights being their vote shares. We find that parties' policy preferences and their rent levels are strongly linked. Our main result is that an extreme party chooses a higher rent level than a moderate party, except in some cases of unlikely distributions of parties. An extreme party has more policy influence than a moderate party since it pulls the final policy towards its position more than a moderate party. Hence, a voter is ready to pay more rents to an extreme party in exchange of a greater policy influence. Furthermore, note that the voter does not need to be an extremist to vote for an extreme party. She is acting strategically in order to influence the final policy in her advantage as much as possible. In turn, this strategic behaviour of voters allow more extreme parties to earn higher rent levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Aytimur, Refik Emre, 2013. "Extreme parties and political rents," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 161, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:cegedp:161
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/76666/1/751184314.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini & Francesco Trebbi, 2003. "Electoral Rules and Corruption," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 958-989, June.
    2. Francesco Sinopoli & Giovanna Iannantuoni, 2007. "A spatial voting model where proportional rule leads to two-party equilibria," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 35(2), pages 267-286, January.
    3. Kedar, Orit, 2005. "When Moderate Voters Prefer Extreme Parties: Policy Balancingin Parliamentary Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(2), pages 185-199, May.
    4. Baron, David P., 1993. "Government Formation and Endogenous Parties," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 34-47, March.
    5. Anderson, Christopher J. & Guillory, Christine A., 1997. "Political Institutions and Satisfaction with Democracy: A Cross-National Analysis of Consensus and Majoritarian Systems," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 91(1), pages 66-81, March.
    6. John Ferejohn, 1986. "Incumbent performance and electoral control," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 5-25, January.
    7. David P. Baron & Daniel Diermeier, 2001. "Elections, Governments, and Parliaments in Proportional Representation Systems," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(3), pages 933-967.
    8. Matias Iaryczower & Andrea Mattozzi, 2012. "The pro-competitive effect of campaign limits in non-majoritarian elections," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 49(3), pages 591-619, April.
    9. Neven, Damien J., 1987. "Endogenous sequential entry in a spatial model," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 419-434.
    10. Kunicová, Jana & Rose-Ackerman, Susan, 2005. "Electoral Rules and Constitutional Structures as Constraints on Corruption," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(4), pages 573-606, October.
    11. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey, 1988. "Elections, Coalitions, and Legislative Outcomes," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(2), pages 405-422, June.
    12. G. Bingham Powell Jr, 1989. "Constitutional Design and Citizen Electoral Control," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 1(2), pages 107-130, April.
    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. Antonio Merlo, 2005. "Whither Political Economy? Theories, Facts and Issues," PIER Working Paper Archive 05-033, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Dec 2005.
    2. De Sinopoli, Francesco & Iannantuoni, Giovanna & Manzoni, Elena & Pimienta, Carlos, 2019. "Proportional representation with uncertainty," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 18-23.
    3. Bol, Damien & Matakos, Konstantinos & Troumpounis, Orestis & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2019. "Electoral rules, strategic entry and polarization," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    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. Jan Zápal, 2017. "Crafting consensus," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 169-200, October.
    6. 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.
    7. Piolatto, Amedeo, 2011. "Plurality versus proportional electoral rule: Which is most representative of voters?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 311-327, June.
    8. Nikolas Tsakas & Dimitrios Xefteris & Nicholas Ziros, 2021. "Vote Trading in Power-Sharing Systems: A Laboratory Investigation," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(636), pages 1849-1882.
    9. 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.
    10. Dimitrios Xefteris & Nicholas Ziros, 2017. "Strategic Vote Trading in Power Sharing Systems," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 76-94, May.
    11. Michael Mitsopoulos & Theodore Pelagidis, 2017. "A model of constitutional design and corruption," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 67-90, August.
    12. Enriqueta Aragonès & Javier Rivas & Áron Tóth, 2019. "Voter Heterogeneity and Political Corruption," Working Papers 1121, Barcelona School of Economics.
    13. Francesco Sinopoli & Giovanna Iannantuoni, 2008. "Extreme voting under proportional representation: the multidimensional case," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(3), pages 401-417, April.
    14. Andrea Mattozzi & Matias Iaryczower, 2008. "Ideology and Competence in Alternative Electoral Systems," 2008 Meeting Papers 980, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    15. Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Mandar Oak, 2022. "Party Formation and Coalitional Bargaining in a Model of Proportional Representation," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-17, June.
    16. David P Baron, 2018. "Elections and durable governments in parliamentary governments," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 30(1), pages 74-118, January.
    17. Benjamin Nyblade & Steven R. Reed, 2008. "Who Cheats? Who Loots? Political Competition and Corruption in Japan, 1947–1993," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 926-941, October.
    18. Comin, Diego & Mestieri, Martí, 2014. "Technology Diffusion: Measurement, Causes, and Consequences," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 2, pages 565-622, Elsevier.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    electoral competition; rent-seeking political parties; proportional representation system;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

    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:zbw:cegedp:161. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdgoede.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.