|
on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Stadelmann, David; Portmann, Marco; Eichenberger, Reiner |
| Abstract: | Electoral systems determine the role party affiliations play in political representation. According to conventional expectations, politicians’ party affiliations should influence political representation when they are elected under a proportional system. In contrast, majoritarian systems force politicians to converge to the median position of their constituency, thus, muting the role of party affiliations to some extent. Using unique data, we test these predictions within a common party system by matching referenda decisions of constituents with voting behavior of their representatives, who are elected either by a majoritarian or proportional system. |
| JEL: | D72 D78 H70 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145705&r=cdm |
| By: | Camilo García-Jimeno; Pinar Yildirim |
| Abstract: | We study the strategic interaction between the media and Senate candidates during elections. While the media is instrumental for candidates to communicate with voters, candidates and media outlets have conflicting preferences over the contents of the reporting. In competitive electoral environments such as most US Senate races, this can lead to a strategic environment resembling a matching pennies game. Based on this observation, we develop a model of bipartisan races where media outlets report about candidates, and candidates make decisions on the type of constituencies to target with their statements along the campaign trail. We develop a methodology to classify news content as suggestive of the target audience of candidate speech, and show how data on media reports and poll results, together with the behavioral implications of the model, can be used to estimate its parameters. We implement this methodology on US Senatorial races for the period 1980-2012, and find that Democratic candidates have stronger incentives to target their messages towards turning out their core supporters than Republicans. We also find that the cost in swing-voter support from targeting core supporters is larger for Democrats than for Republicans. These effects balance each other, making media outlets willing to cover candidates from both parties at similar rates. |
| JEL: | C50 C7 D72 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23198&r=cdm |
| By: | Pavithra Suryanarayan |
| Abstract: | What explains the popularity of right-wing parties amongst the poor? This paper argues that in hierarchical societies with high social-status inequality, poor high-status voters may ally with rich high-status voters if they believe their social-status is under threat. I demonstrate this in the context of the Indian states by exploiting an announcement by the Government of India in 1990 to implement affirmative action for lower castes—an intervention that threatened to weaken the social-status of upper-caste Brahmans. Using unique data from the 1931 census, this paper shows that areas where Brahmans were more dominant in the 1930s experienced a higher surge in rightwing voting after this announcement than other areas. Using survey data, I find that both wealthy and poor Brahmans voted for the right-wing where Brahmans were dominant in 1931. The paper shows how concerns about social-status may make the poor open to appeals by anti-redistribution parties. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2017-20&r=cdm |
| By: | Ochsner, Christian; Roesel, Felix |
| Abstract: | We show that migrating extremists shape political landscapes toward their ideology in the long run. We exploit the unexpected division of the state of Upper Austria into a US and a Soviet occupation zone after WWII. Zoning prompts large-scale Nazi migration to US occupied regions. Regions that witnessed a Nazi influx exhibit significantly higher voting shares for the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) throughout the entire post-WWII period, but not before WWII. We can exclude other channels that may have affected post-war elections, including differences in US and Soviet denazification and occupation policies, bomb attacks, Volksdeutsche refugees and suppression by other political parties. We show that extremism is transmitted through family ties and local party branches. We find that the surnames of FPÖ local election candidates in 2015 in the former US zone are more prevalent in 1942 phonebook data (Reichstelefonbuch) of the former Soviet zone compared to other parties. |
| JEL: | R23 D72 N94 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145632&r=cdm |
| By: | Kauder, Björn; Björn, Kauder; Niklas, Potrafke; Markus, Reischmann |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether politicians award intergovernmental grants to core supporters. Our new dataset contains information on discretionary project grants from a German state government to municipalities over the period 2008-2011. The results show that discretionary grants were awarded to municipalities with many core supporters of the incumbent state government. Discretionary grants per capita increased by about 1.4 percent when the vote share of the incumbent party in the state election increased by one percentage point. We propose to trim discretionary project grants to the benefit of formula-based grants. |
| JEL: | D72 H72 H77 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145509&r=cdm |
| By: | Schmidt, Robert; Kovac, Eugen |
| Abstract: | A standard result from the game theoretic literature on international environmental agreements is that coalitions are either `broad but shallow' or `narrow but deep'. Hence, the stable coalition size is small when the potential welfare gains are large. We modify a standard climate coalition game by adding a - seemingly - small but realistic feature: we allow countries to delay climate negotiations until the next `round' if a coalition forms but decides to remain inactive. It turns out that results are surprisingly different under this modification. In particular, a large coalition with deep emissions cuts forms if countries are sufficiently patient. Our results also indicate that countries should try hard to overcome coordination problems in the formation of a coalition. A more cooperative outcome may then be reached, and it may be reached more quickly. |
| JEL: | D62 F53 Q54 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145481&r=cdm |
| By: | Armin von Schiller |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the effect of party system institutionalization on the reliance of tax systems on the personal income tax. As a first step, the paper re-examines the relationship between party system institutionalization and taxation patterns employing the recently launched Government Revenue Dataset. In a second step, the relationship in tested in different country subgroups, based on governance structures, availability of alternative sources of revenue, and geographical location. The main results remain fairly robust using the Government Revenue Dataset: where bureaucratic capacity is low, the effect of party system institutionalization is large and highly significant, whereas where bureaucratic capacity is high this effect disappears. Furthermore, the analysis using the Government Revenue Dataset provides additional insights into the large variance between groups of countries. The results indicate that the effect is particularly strong and robust in democratic regimes and where alternative sources of revenue are abundant. Overall, the findings can be considered to provide additional support for two claims: first, that taxation is best understood as a problem of credible commitment, particularly where bureaucratic capacity tends to be limited, and second, that institutionalized collective actors, such as political parties, play a key role in solving this problem. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2017-32&r=cdm |
| By: | Emanuele Bracco; Colin Peter Green; Maria De Paola; Vincenzo Scoppa |
| Abstract: | Immigration has increasingly taken centre-stage in the political landscape. Part of this has been rise in far-right, anti-immigration parties in a range of countries. Existing evidence suggests that the presence of immigrants has a substantial effect on the political views of the electorate, generating an advantage to these parties with anti-immigration or nationalist platforms. This paper explores a closely related issue but overlooked issue: how immigrant behavior is influenced by these parties. We focus on immigrant location decisions in Northern Italy which has seen the rise of the anti-immigration party Lega Nord. We construct a dataset of mayoral elections in Italy for the years 2002-2014, and calculate the effect of electing a mayor belonging to, or supported by Lega Nord. To identify this relationship we focus on mayors who have been elected with narrow margins of victory in a Regression Discontinuity framework. The election of Lega Nord mayor discourages immigrants from moving into the municipality. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Geographical Mobility, Voting Behavior, Political economy, Regression Discontinuity Design |
| JEL: | J15 J61 D72 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lan:wpaper:156985061&r=cdm |
| By: | Li-Xin Zhong; Wen-Juan Xu; Yun-Xin He; Chen-Yang Zhong; Rong-Da Chen; Tian Qiu; Yong-Dong Shi |
| Abstract: | Facing a heavy task, any single person can only make a limited contribution and team cooperation is needed. As one enjoys the benefit of the public goods, the potential benefits of the project are not always maximized and may be partly wasted. By incorporating individual ability and project benefit into the original public goods game, we study the coupling effect of the four parameters, the upper limit of individual contribution, the upper limit of individual benefit, the needed project cost and the upper limit of project benefit on the evolution of cooperation. Coevolving with the individual-level group size preferences, an increase in the upper limit of individual benefit promotes cooperation while an increase in the upper limit of individual contribution inhibits cooperation. The coupling of the upper limit of individual contribution and the needed project cost determines the critical point of the upper limit of project benefit, where the equilibrium frequency of cooperators reaches its highest level. Above the critical point, an increase in the upper limit of project benefit inhibits cooperation. The evolution of cooperation is closely related to the preferred group-size distribution. A functional relation between the frequency of cooperators and the dominant group size is found. |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1702.07423&r=cdm |