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Contest with Attack and Defence: Does Negative Campaigning Increase or Decrease Voters’ Turnout?

Author

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  • Raphaël Soubeyran

    (GREQAM Université de la Mediterrannée)

Abstract

We present a general model of two players contest with two types of efforts. Contrary to the classical models of contest, where each player chooses a unique effort, and where the outcome depends on the efforts of all the players, contestants are allowed to reduce the effort of the opponent. Defence increases one’s chance of winning while attack annihilates the defence of the opponent. This model has many applications like political campaigning, wars, competition among lobbies, job promotion competitions, or sport contests. We study the general model of contest with attacks and defence and propose an application to negative political campaigns, where two candidates arbitrate between disparaging their opponent or enhancing their own image. We propose sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of a symmetric Nash equilibrium of the contest game. In the application, we contribute to the empirically debated question dealing with the effect of attack on voters turnout, and show that the conclusion depends on the distribution of voters sensitivity to defence and attack. Furthermore, contrary to the literature, we show that an underdog candidate may be less aggressive than his opponent.

Suggested Citation

  • Raphaël Soubeyran, 2005. "Contest with Attack and Defence: Does Negative Campaigning Increase or Decrease Voters’ Turnout?," Working Papers 2005.128, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
  • Handle: RePEc:fem:femwpa:2005.128
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Ansolabehere, Stephen D. & Iyengar, Shanto & Simon, Adam, 1999. "Replicating Experiments Using Aggregate and Survey Data: The Case of Negative Advertising and Turnout," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 93(4), pages 901-909, December.
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    9. Cesar Martinelli & Helios Herrera & David K. Levine, 2004. "Voting Leaders and Voting Participation," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 319, Econometric Society.
    10. Ansolabehere, Stephen & Iyengar, Shanto & Simon, Adam & Valentino, Nicholas, 1994. "Does Attack Advertising Demobilize the Electorate?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(4), pages 829-838, December.
    11. Lazear, Edward P, 1989. "Pay Equality and Industrial Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 561-580, June.
    12. J. Amegashie & Marco Runkel, 2007. "Sabotaging Potential Rivals," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 28(1), pages 143-162, January.
    13. Kong-Pin Chen, 2003. "Sabotage in Promotion Tournaments," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 119-140, April.
    14. Polborn, Mattias K. & David T., Yi, 2006. "Informative Positive and Negative Campaigning," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 1(4), pages 351-371, October.
    15. Kahn, Kim Fridkin & Kenney, Patrick J., 1999. "Do Negative Campaigns Mobilize or Suppress Turnout? Clarifying the Relationship between Negativity and Participation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 93(4), pages 877-889, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Bernhardt, Dan & Ghosh, Meenakshi, 2020. "Positive and negative campaigning in primary and general elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 98-104.
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    3. Subhasish Chowdhury & Oliver Gürtler, 2015. "Sabotage in contests: a survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 135-155, July.
    4. Maria Arbatskaya & Hugo M. Mialon, 2012. "Dynamic Multi‐Activity Contests," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(2), pages 520-538, June.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Contest; Rent-seeking; Sabotage; Negative campaigning; Turnout;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

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