Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-27T08:40:44.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Electoral Competition with Informed and Uninformed Voters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

David P. Baron
David P. Baron
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I present a model of electoral competition in which candidates raise campaign contributions by choosing policies that benefit interest groups and then expend those contributions to influence voters who are uninformed about the policies. Informed voters, however, vote based on those policies, so candidates face a trade-off between choosing a policy to generate funds to attract the uninformed vote and choosing a policy to attract the informed vote. Electoral equilibria are characterized for two categories of policies: particularistic and collective. In the case of particularistic policies, the equilibrium policies of the candidates are separated if the proportion of uninformed voters is sufficiently high, and the degree of separation is an increasing function of that proportion. The model is extended to include the public financing of elections and incumbency advantages. For the case of collective policies, the candidates locate at the median of the ideal points of the informed voters, and contributions are zero.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 88 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 33 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Austen-Smith, David. 1987. “Interest Groups, Campaign Contributions, and Probabilistic Voting.” Public Choice 54:123–39.Google Scholar
Austen-Smith, David, and Banks, Jeffrey S.. 1989. “Electoral Accountability and Incumbency.” In Models of Strategic Choice in Politics, ed. Ordeshook, Peter. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Banks, Jeffrey S. 1990. “A Model of Electoral Competition with Incomplete Information.” Journal of Economic Theory 50:309–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, David P. 1989a. “Service-induced Campaign Contributions and the Electoral Equilibrium.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 104:45–72.Google Scholar
Baron, David P. 1989b. “Service-induced Campaign Contributions, Incumbent Shirking, and Reelection Opportunities.” In Models of Strategic Choice in Politics, ed. Ordeshook, Peter. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Baron, David P. 1992. “Electoral Competition with Informed and Uninformed Voters.” Working Paper No. 1174. Stanford University.Google Scholar
Baron, David P. 1993. Business and Its Environment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice–Hall.Google Scholar
Baron, David P., and Mo, Jongryn. 1993. “Campaign Contributions and Party–Candidate Competition in Services and Policies.” In Political Economy: Institutions, Information, Competition, and Representation, ed. Barnert, W. et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Black, Duncan. 1958. Theory of Committees and Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brock, William, and Magee, Stephen. 1978. “The Economics of Special Interest Politics: The Case of the Tariff.” American Economic Review 68:246–50.Google Scholar
Cameron, Charles M., and Enelow, James M.. 1989. “Asymmetric Policy Effects, Campaign Contributions, and the Spatial Theory of Elections.” Columbia University. Typescript.Google Scholar
Chappell, Henry. 1982. “Campaign Contributions and Congressional Voting: A Simultaneous Probit–Tobit Model.” Review of Economics and Statistics 62:77–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Gary W. 1990. “Centripetal and Centrifugal Incentives in Electoral Systems.” American Journal of Political Science 34:903–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denzau, Arthur T., and Munger, Michael C.. 1986. “Legislators and Interest Groups: How Organized Interests Get Represented.” American Political Science Review 80:89–106.Google Scholar
Edelman, Susan. 1990. “Two Politicians, a PAC, and How They Interact: Two Sequential Models.” Columbia University. Typescript.Google Scholar
Hinich, Melvin. 1977. “Equilibrium Spatial Voting: The Median Voter Is an Artifact.” Journal of Economic Theory 16:208–19.Google Scholar
Hinich, Melvin, and Munger, Michael. 1989. “Political Investment, Voter Perceptions, and Candidate Strategy: An Equilibrium Spatial Analysis.” In Models of Strategic Choice in Politics, ed. Ordeshook, Peter. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Gary C. 1987. The Politics of Congressional Elections. 2d ed., Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Londregan, John, and Romer, Thomas. 1993. “Polarization, Incumbency, and the Personal Vote.” In Political Economy: Institutions, Information, Competition, and Representation, ed. Barnert, W., et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore J. 1964. “American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies, and Political Theory.” World Politics 16:677–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luce, R. Duncan. 1959. Individual Choice Behavior. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
McKelvey, Richard, and Ordeshook, Peter. 1985. “Elections with Limited Information: A Fulfilled Expectations Model Using Contemporaneous Poll and Endogenous Data as Information Sources.” Journal of Economic Theory 36:55–85.Google Scholar
Magee, Stephen P., Brock, William A., and Young, Leslie. 1989. Black Hole Tariffs and Endogenous Policy Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Morton, Rebecca, and Cameron, Charles. 1991. “Elections and the Theory of Campaign Contributions: A Survey and Critical Analysis.” Economics and Politics 4:79–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poole, Keith T., and Romer, Thomas. 1985. “Patterns of Political Action Committee Contributions to the 1980 Campaign for the United States House of Representatives.” Public Choice 47:63–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, James M. 1989. “Election Goals and the Allocation of Campaign Resources.” Econometrica 57:637–60.Google Scholar
Snyder, James M. 1990a. “Campaign Contributions as Investments: The U.S. House of Representatives 1980–1986.” Journal of Political Economy 98:1195–1227.Google Scholar
Snyder, James M. 1990b. “The Market for Campaign Contributions: Evidence for the U.S. Senate 1980–1986.” University of Chicago. Typescript.Google Scholar
Wilhite, Allen, and Theilmann, John. 1987. “Labor PAC Contributions and Labor Legislation: A Simultaneous Logit Approach.” Public Choice 53:267–76.Google Scholar
Wilson, James Q. 1980. The Politics of Regulation. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Wright, John. 1990. “Contributions, Lobbying, and Committee Voting in the U.S. House of Representatives.” American Political Science Review 84:417–38.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.