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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Ernesto Screpanti |
| Abstract: | In a representative democracy, members of parliament should be accountable to the voters who elected them. For this to be actually the case, the latter require an instrument of deterrence, a mechanism of control over opportunistic representatives, for example the right to recall them at any moment. However, two obstacles, one ideological and one practical, hinder legal recognition of this right. The first is due to the doctrine by which members of parliament legislate in the public interest, and therefore should not be constrained by a mandate binding them to their particular voters. The second consists in the fact that voting secrecy hinders the identification of which voters elected any one member of parliament. In this article, leveraging the potential offered by modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), I propose a model for an electoral system that dissolves the first problem and resolves the second. According to my model, electoral platforms constitute the formal instructions by which members of parliament are held accountable, and an electronic vote makes it possible to associate each member of parliament with his or her voters while still guaranteeing voting secrecy. Voters are then able to participate in a process of deliberation about the decisions made by their representative and may revoke their mandate if the representative fails to comply with it. |
| Keywords: | Election law, civil law, e-democracy, right of recall |
| JEL: | K15 K16 K38 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:847&r=all |
| By: | Raouf Boucekkine (Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France and IRES, UCLouvain, Belgium.); Rodolphe Desbordes (SKEMA Business School-UCA); Paolo Melindi-Ghidi (xEconomix, UPL, Paris-Nanterre University, CNRS ; AMSE Aix-Marseille University, France and IRES, UCLouvain, Belgium.) |
| Abstract: | Elite-biased democracies are those democracies in which former political incumbents and their allies coordinate to impose part of the autocratic institutional rules in the new political regime. We document that this type of democratic transition is much more prevalent than the emergence of pure (popular) democracies in which the majority decides the new political rules. We then develop a theoretical model explaining how an elitebiased democracy may arise in an initially autocratic country. To this end, we extend the benchmark political transition model of Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) along two essential directions. First, population is split into majority versus minority groups under the initial autocratic regime. Second, the minority is an insider as it benefits from a more favourable redistribution by the autocrat. We derive conditions under which elite-biased democracies emerge and characterise them, in particular with respect to pure democracies. |
| Keywords: | elite-biased democracy, institutional change, minority/majority, economicfavouritism, Inequality, revolution. |
| JEL: | D72 C73 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2039&r=all |
| By: | Jules Baleyte (INSEE); Amory Gethin (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab); Yajna Govind (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab); Thomas Piketty (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab) |
| Abstract: | This paper draws on political attitudes surveys to document the evolution of political cleavages in Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal, four African countries that have held regular multi-party elections in the past two decades. We discuss how colonialism, the politicization of ethnic identities, and the structure of social inequalities have differentially shaped party politics in these countries. Ethnic cleavages are tightly linked to ethnic inequalities, and are highest in Nigeria, at intermediate levels in Ghana, and lowest in Botswana and Senegal. We find evidence of strong educational and rural-urban divides, which cannot be explained by ethnic or regional affiliations. Our results suggest that in these four countries, electoral politics are not only explained by patronage, valence, or leader effects, but also clearly have a socioeconomic dimension. At a time when class cleavages have partly collapsed in old Western democracies, these African democracies could well be moving towards class-based party systems. |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wilwps:halshs-03022210&r=all |
| By: | Amory Gethin (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab) |
| Abstract: | This paper draws on political attitudes surveys conducted at the time of general elections to study the interplay of social inequalities, changing social structures, and racial cleavages in South Africa since 1994. I analyze the link between voting behaviors and the main socioeconomic characteristics of voters, in particular income, education level, wealth, race, and their interactions. I document extreme socioeconomic political divides, which are strongly, though not entirely explained by South Africa's exceptional racial inequalities. The gradual decline of the dominant African National Congress since 1994 has been driven by the shift of the new Black middle class towards opposition parties. Growing abstention among the youth and the lower-educated has further eroded support for the ANC. I also put South Africa's cleavage politics in comparative perspective, focusing on how the transformation of dominant-party systems in new democracies plays a role in crystallizing new sociopolitical identities. |
| Date: | 2020–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wilwps:halshs-03022282&r=all |
| By: | Francesco Campo; Sara Giunti; Mariapia Mendola |
| Abstract: | The ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe has created a public opinion backlash. Italy has been on the frontline of this crisis but little is known about its political impact on voting behavior and electoral outcomes. We collect unique administrative data on the refugee relocation system across Italian municipalities during the crisis (2014-2017) to assess the causal effect of the inflow of asylum seekers on political support for radical-right anti-immigration parties and vote shares in parliamentary elections. We exploit exogenous variation in refugee settlement induced by the Italian Dispersal Policy, set up in 2014 as to exceptionally enlarge the national reception capacity. We find a positive and significant effect of the share of asylum seekers on right-wing-populist support. The effect is significantly heterogeneous across municipality characteristics, yet robust to dispersal policy features. We show that the anti–immigration backlash is not rooted in adverse economic effects, while it is triggered by radical–right propaganda. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Refugee Crisis, Political Preferences, Dispersal Policy |
| JEL: | H53 I38 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mib:wpaper:456&r=all |
| By: | Marcella Alsan; Katherine Eriksson; Gregory Niemesh |
| Abstract: | We study the contribution of economic conditions to the success of the first avowedly nativist political party in the United States. The Know-Nothing Party gained control of a number of state governments in the 1854-1856 elections running on a staunchly anti-Catholic and anti-Irish platform. Our analysis focuses on the case of Massachusetts, which had experienced a wave of Irish Famine immigration and was at the forefront of industrialization in the United States. Voters in towns with more exposure to Irish labor market crowdout and deskilling in manufacturing were more likely to vote for Know-Nothing candidates in state elections. These two forces played a decisive role in 1855, but not the other years of the Know Nothings’ success. We find evidence of reduced wealth accumulation for native workers most exposed to labor market crowdout and deskilling, though this was tempered by occupational upgrading. |
| JEL: | J01 J1 J15 J71 N12 N32 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28078&r=all |
| By: | Benson Tsz Kin Leung; Pinar Yildirim |
| Abstract: | An increasing number of politicians are relying on cheaper, easier to access technologies such as online social media platforms to communicate with their constituency. These platforms present a cheap and low-barrier channel of communication to politicians, potentially intensifying political competition by allowing many to enter political races. In this study, we demonstrate that lowering costs of communication, which allows many entrants to come into a competitive market, can strengthen an incumbent's position when the newcomers compete by providing more information to the voters. We show an asymmetric bad-news-good-news effect where early negative news hurts the challengers more than the positive news benefit them, such that in aggregate, an incumbent politician's chances of winning is higher with more entrants in the market. Our findings indicate that communication through social media and other platforms can intensify competition, how-ever incumbency advantage may be strengthened rather than weakened as an outcome of higher number of entrants into a political market. |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2012.03327&r=all |
| By: | Sebasti\'an Morales; Charles Thraves |
| Abstract: | In an election campaign, candidates must decide how to optimally allocate their efforts/resources optimally among the regions of a country. As a result, the outcome of the election will depend on the players' strategies and the voters' preferences. In this work, we present a zero-sum game where two candidates decide how to invest a fixed resource in a set of regions, while considering their sizes and biases. We explore the Majority System (MS) as well as the Electoral College (EC) voting systems. We prove equilibrium existence and uniqueness under MS in a deterministic model; in addition, their closed form expressions are provided when fixing the subset of regions and relaxing the non-negative investing constraint. For the stochastic case, we use Monte Carlo simulations to compute the players' payoffs, together with its gradient and hessian. For the EC, given the lack of Equilibrium in pure strategies, we propose an iterative algorithm to find Equilibrium in mixed strategies in a subset of the simplex lattice. We illustrate numerical instances under both election systems, and contrast players' equilibrium strategies. Finally, we show that polarization induces candidates to focus on larger regions with negative biases under MS, whereas candidates concentrate on swing states under EC. |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2012.02856&r=all |
| By: | Pablo Garofalo; Jorge M. Streb |
| Abstract: | We study the relationship between exchange-rate regime announcements and exchange-rate dynamics around government changes by combining the IMF de jure and the Reinhart and Rogoff de facto exchange-rate regime classifications. Using monthly data from Latin American democracies, we do not identify significant exchange-rate depreciations before the change of government in any of the regimes, but we do identify a gradual exchange-rate overvaluation when regimes are fixed inconsistent (i.e., the de jure regime announcement is fixed and differs from the de facto behavior). After the change of government, the overvaluation under fixed-inconsistent regimes is abruptly corrected through significant devaluations. We thus identify a pattern of broken promises by which incumbents delay devaluations until after the change of government under fixed-inconsistent announcements, but not under fixed-consistent ones. Controlling for conditional volatility, we also detect significant “fear of floating” in flexible-inconsistent regimes before the change of government, when electoral stakes are highest. |
| Keywords: | exchange-rate regimes, exchange-rate overvaluations, electoral cycles |
| JEL: | D72 D78 E00 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:767&r=all |
| By: | Aksoy, Cevat Giray; Poutvaara, Panu; Schikora, Felicitas |
| Abstract: | We study the causal effect of local labor market conditions and attitudes towards immigrants at the time of arrival on refugees’ multi-dimensional integration outcomes (economic, linguistic, navigational, political, psychological, and social). Using a unique dataset on refugees, we leverage a centralized allocation policy in Germany where refugees were exogenously assigned to live in specific counties. We find that high initial local unemployment negatively affects refugees’ economic and social integration: they are less likely to be in education or employment and they earn less. We also show that favorable attitudes towards immigrants promote refugees’ economic and social integration. The results suggest that attitudes toward immigrants are as important as local unemployment rates in shaping refugees’ integration outcomes. Using a machine learning classifier algorithm, we find that our results are driven by older people and those with secondary or tertiary education. Our findings highlight the importance of both initial economic and social conditions for facilitating refugee integration, and have implications for the design of centralized allocation policies. |
| Date: | 2020–11–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:nsr8q&r=all |
| By: | Sutirtha Bagchi (Department of Economics, Villanova School of Business, Villanova University); James Naughton (Darden School of Business, University of Virginia) |
| Abstract: | We provide evidence that political pressure creates incentives for elected officials to choose higher discount rates to value defined benefit pension promises, thus artificially reducing the short-term reported cost of these benefits. We generate our inferences using a unique panel dataset for all local pension plans from the state of Pennsylvania for 2003–2013, and by comparing the differential response to the GASB requirement to lower the discount rate after the Great Recession for plans that are managed by elected officials versus those that are managed by non-elected officials (i.e., municipal authority plans). We find that appointed officials in charge of municipal authority plans decreased their discount rate by 29 basis points more than elected officials in charge of municipal plans. This difference is not attributable to plan factors or financial reporting requirements, and suggests that political pressure leads to optimistic discount rate assumptions. |
| Keywords: | Public-sector pensions; Defined benefit pensions; Discount rate; Municipal authorities |
| JEL: | H75 M41 H83 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vil:papers:48&r=all |
| By: | Thomas Piketty (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab); Fabian Kosse (LMU - Institut für Informatik [München/Munich] - LMU - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the changing relationships between party support, electoral cleavages and socioeconomic inequality in Germany since 1949. We analyze the link between voting behaviors and socioeconomic characteristics of voters. In the 1950s-1970s, the vote for left parties was strongly associated with lower education and lower income voters. Since the 1980s voting for left parties has become associated with higher education voters. In effect, intellectual and economic elites seem to have drifted apart, with high-education elites voting for the left and high-income elites voting for the right. We analyze how this process is related to the occurrence of new parties since 1980 and the recent rise of populism. |
| Date: | 2020–11–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wilwps:halshs-03022265&r=all |