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Uncertainty and the Formal Theory of Political Campaigns*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

John A. Ferejohn  and
Roger G. Noll
John A. Ferejohn
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
Roger G. Noll
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
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Abstract

Many empirical investigations indicate that information is scarce and therefore costly to holders and seekers of public office. Indeed, some studies suggest that imperfect information may account for important aspects of the behavior of politicians. Nevertheless, there is as yet no theoretical investigation of political decision making that illustrates the impact of costly information or behavior.

In this paper the authors develop a model of electoral competition in which the candidates are only imperfectly aware of public preferences over issues and in which they may have the opportunity to increase the amount of information they hold at some cost. It turns out that the absence of perfect information profoundly affects the strategic structure of candidate competition. If information is costless, two-party electoral contests are naturally modeled as symmetric two-person zero-sum games. However, if candidates have distinct beliefs about voter behavior, the natural game-theoretic representation becomes a non-zero-sum game. This article is concerned mostly with analyzing the consequences of this transformation.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 492 - 505
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1978

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1974 Mathematical Social Science Board Workshop on “Uncertainty, Political Processes and Public Policy.” We are grateful for the comments and encouragement provided by Morris Fiorina, David Grether, Melvin Hinich, Richard McKelvey, Charles Plott, William Riker, Norman Schofield, Kenneth Shepsle, and an anonymous referee. We are also grateful to John Allen and Barry Weingast for research assistance.

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