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- Title
Candidates, Credibility, and Re-election Incentives.
- Authors
Van Weelden, Richard
- Abstract
I study elections between citizen-candidates who cannot make binding policy commitments before taking office, but who are accountable to voters due to the possibility of re-election. In each period a representative voter chooses among heterogeneous candidates with known policy preferences. The elected candidate chooses the policy to implement, and how much rent-seeking to engage in, when in office. As the voter decides both which candidate to elect and, subsequently, whether the candidate is retained, this framework integrates elements of electoral competition and electoral accountability. I show that, in the best stationary equilibrium, when utility functions are concave over policy, non-median candidates are elected over candidates with policy preferences more closely aligned with the voter. In this equilibrium, there are two candidates who are elected at some history, and the policies these candidates implement in office do not converge. This divergence incentivizes candidates to engage in less rent-seeking, increasing voter welfare.
- Subjects
POLITICAL competition; ELECTION policy; VOTERS; PUBLIC welfare; POLITICAL campaigns
- Publication
Review of Economic Studies, 2013, Vol 80, Issue 4, p1622
- ISSN
0034-6527
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/restud/rdt014