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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Leopoldo Fergusson; Juan F. Vargas; Mauricio A. Vela |
| Abstract: | Free media may not favor political accountability when other democratic institutions are weak, and may even bring undesirable unintended consequences. We propose a simple model in which politicians running for office may engage in coercion to obtain votes. A media scandal that exposes these candidates increases their coercion effort to offset the negative popularity shock. This may result in the tainted politicians actually increasing their vote share. We provide empirical evidence from one recent episode in the political history of Colombia, the ‘parapolitics' scandal featuring politicians colluding with illegal armed paramilitary groups to obtain votes. We show that colluding candidates not only get more votes than their clean competitors, but also concentrate them in areas where coercion is more likely (namely, areas with more paramilitary presence, less state presence, and more judicial inefficiency). Harder to reconcile with other explanations and as a direct test of the effects of media exposure, we compare tainted candidates exposed before elections to those exposed after. We find that those exposed before elections get as many votes as those exposed once elected, but their electoral support is more strongly concentrated in places where coercion is more likely. Our results highlight the complementarity between different dimensions of democratic institutions. |
| Date: | 2013–02–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:010487&r=pol |
| By: | Elena Manzoni; Stefan P. Penczynski |
| Abstract: | This paper models a purely informational mechanism behind the incumbency advantage. In a two-period electoral campaign with two policy issues, a specialized incumbent and an unspecialized, but possibly more competent challenger compete for election by voters who are heterogeneously informed about the state of the world. Due to the asymmetries in government responsibility between candidates, the incumbent's statement may convey information on the relevance of the issues to voters. In equilibrium, the incumbent sometimes strategically releases his statement early and thus signals the importance of his signature issue to the voters. We find that, since the incumbent's positioning on the issue reveals private information which the challenger can use in later statements, the incumbent's incentives to distort the campaign are decreasing in the quality of the incumbent, as previously documented by the empirical literature. However, we show that this implies a non-monotonicity in the distortions that arise in equilibrium. |
| Keywords: | Incumbency advantage, electoral competition, information revelation, agenda |
| JEL: | D72 D82 D60 |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mib:wpaper:229&r=pol |
| By: | Antonio Merlo (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania); Thomas R.Palfrey (Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology) |
| Abstract: | We conduct a model validation analysis of several behavioral models of voter turnout, using laboratory data. We call our method of model validation concealed parameter recovery, where estimation of a model is done under a veil of ignorance about some of the experimentally controlled parameters — in this case voting costs. We use quantal response equilibrium as the underlying, common structure for estimation, and estimate models of instrumental voting, altruistic voting, expressive voting, and ethical voting. All the models except the ethical model recover the concealed parameters reasonably well. We also report the results of a counterfactual analysis based on the recovered parameters, to compare the policy implications of the different models about the cost of a subsidy to increase turnout. |
| Keywords: | Turnout, voting, model validation, parameter recovery, laboratory experiments |
| JEL: | D72 C52 C92 |
| Date: | 2013–02–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pen:papers:13-012&r=pol |
| By: | Manoel Bittencourt |
| Abstract: | We investigate in this paper the hypothesis that when democracies are young, or still fragile and unconsolidated, the size of government tends to increase, predictably in an attempt of redistribution, or to buy out the electorate, so that democracy becomes acceptable and "the only game in town". For that we use a sample of all nine South American young democracies during the period between 1970 and 2007. The results, based on dynamic panel data analysis, suggest that the young democracies of South America have been indeed associated with bigger governments. Furthermore, we test for the hypothesis that the outgoing dictatorships of the day engaged in activities which would bequest the young democracies with big bills to be repaid at the initial stages of those new democratic regimes. This hypothesis is not con.rmed by the analysis conducted here. Finally, there is evidence that, as those democracies mature over the long run, the size of governments tends to decrease, or to return to a sort of long-run steady state. All in all, in times of a new wave of democratisation being experienced by some countries, the evidence presented here is rather informative of what to expect in terms of government size during political transitions. |
| Keywords: | Democracy, government, South America |
| JEL: | H11 N16 O11 O54 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rza:wpaper:329&r=pol |
| By: | Ronny Freier; Benny Geys; Joshua Holm |
| Abstract: | Theoretical work based on social identity theory and in-group favoritism predicts that increased population diversity (e.g., due to immigration) reduces support for redistributive public policies. In this article, we add to the empirical literature testing this prediction in three ways. First, rather than ethno-linguistic or racial heterogeneity, we analyze religious diversity, which in many countries is an increasingly important source of diversity. Second, to account for the potential endogeneity of heterogeneity, we analyze an exogenous shock in diversity due to the German reunification. Finally, we assess shifts in local individuals' social identification after immigration took place, which, while untested in previous contributions, is a critical theoretical mechanism. Our results - using tax and spending decisions of 2031 Bavarian municipalities over the 1983-2005 period - indicate that Catholic municipalities in particular significantly reduced their level of taxes and spending in response to non-Catholic immigration. These effects arise only after the first post-reunification local elections, suggesting a critical mediating role of the democratic process. |
| Keywords: | local identity, fiscal policy, redistribution, German reunification, diff-in-diff estimation |
| JEL: | H10 H11 H77 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1266&r=pol |
| By: | Bruno Amable (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne, CEPREMAP - Centre pour la recherche économique et ses applications, IUF - Institut Universitaire de France - Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | A policy proposal is to abolish the distinction between regular open-end employment contracts and fixed-term contracts and substitute a unique labour contract with a degree of employment protection increasing with tenure. A question on the desirability of the "contrat unique" was included in the 2012 post-electoral survey. Using the answers to this question, this paper proposens an empirical analysis of the possible social basis for the contrat unique. Insider/outsider theories would predict that insiders would oppose such a reform whereas outsiders would welcome it. Beyond the theoretical and empirical problems associated with the definition and identification of insiders and outsiders, the results of the estimations do not bring an overwhelming support for the insider/outsider theories. The bulk of the social support for the CTU is made of "insiders". The social support for the contrat unique resembles the traditional social base of the Right with the addition of some "outsiders". |
| Keywords: | Contrat unique/single labour contract; insider/outsider; political economy |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00785640&r=pol |