It is commonly held that power has been transferred from political parties to candidates in the last fifty years, and that television is the cause. This paper constructs a game-theoretical model of political competition in which a technological innovation, like television, can have this effect. Political competition takes place between two teams, each consisting of a party and its candidate. The party is principal, the candidate, the agent. Each part have policy preferences (it is Left or Right); candidates, however, wish solely to maximize the probability of victory, net of effort costs. Parties use campaign finance to motivate candidates to expend effort. The party chooses a schedule according to which it invests in the campaign as a function of the policy the candidate announces. Equilibrium is Nash equilibrium between parties, where the strategies are schedules (functions) of campaign financing, where each party is constrained by the actions its agent (the candidate) will take.
A definition of power is proposed, and it is argued that television has changed the model parameters in such a way as to transfer power from parties to candidates.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by California Davis - Department of Economics in its series Department of Economics with number
97-23.
Length: Date of creation: Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:fth:caldec:97-23
Contact details of provider: Postal: University of California Davis - Department of Economics. One Shields Ave., California 95616-8578 Phone: (530) 752-0741 Fax: (530) 752-9382 Email: Web page: http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Thomas Krichel).