IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iuiwop/0568.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Campaigning and Ambiguity when Parties Cannot Make Credible Election Promises

Author

Listed:
  • Westermark, Andreas

    (Uppsala University)

Abstract

This paper studies a model of how political parties use resources for campaigning to inform voters. Each party has a predetermined ideology drawn from some distribution. Parties choose a platform and campaign to inform voters about the platform. We find that, the farther away parties are from each other (on average), the less resources are spent on campaigning (on average). Thus, if parties are extreme, less information is supplied than if parties are moderate. We also show that if a public subsidy is introduced, we have policy convergence, given some mild technical restrictions on the public subsidy.

Suggested Citation

  • Westermark, Andreas, 2001. "Campaigning and Ambiguity when Parties Cannot Make Credible Election Promises," Working Paper Series 568, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0568
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifn.se/Wfiles/wp/WP568.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christian Schultz, 1996. "Polarization and Inefficient Policies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(2), pages 331-344.
    2. Potters, Jan & Sloof, Randolph & van Winden, Frans, 1997. "Campaign expenditures, contributions and direct endorsements: The strategic use of information and money to influence voter behavior," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 1-31, February.
    3. Harrington, Joseph Jr. & Hess, Gregory D., 1996. "A Spatial Theory of Positive and Negative Campaigning," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 209-229, December.
    4. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    5. Ignacio Ortuno‐Ortín & Christian Schultz, 2005. "Public Funding of Political Parties," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 7(5), pages 781-791, December.
    6. Chappell, Henry W, Jr, 1994. "Campaign Advertising and Political Ambiguity," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 79(3-4), pages 281-303, June.
    7. Alberto Alesina & Alex Cukierman, 1990. "The Politics of Ambiguity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(4), pages 829-850.
    8. Mas-Colell,Andreu, 1990. "The Theory of General Economic Equilibrium," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521388702.
    9. Harrington Jr. , Joseph E., 1993. "The Impact of Reelection Pressures on the Fulfillment of Campaign Promises," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 71-97, January.
    10. Westermark, Andreas, 2004. "Extremism, campaigning and ambiguity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 421-452, May.
    11. Banks, Jeffrey S., 1990. "A model of electoral competition with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 309-325, April.
    12. Banks, Jeffrey S & Sobel, Joel, 1987. "Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 647-661, May.
    13. Joseph E. Harrington, 1992. "The Revelation Of Information Through The Electoral Process: An Exploratory Analysis," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(3), pages 255-276, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Westermark, Andreas, 2004. "Extremism, campaigning and ambiguity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 421-452, May.
    2. Yasushi Asako, 2015. "Campaign promises as an imperfect signal: How does an extreme candidate win against a moderate candidate?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(4), pages 613-649, October.
    3. Zhang, Qiaoxi, 2020. "Vagueness in multidimensional proposals," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 307-328.
    4. Vaccari, Federico, 2023. "Competition in costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    5. Robert C. Schmidt, 2015. "The political economy of climate policy," Working Papers 2015015, Berlin Doctoral Program in Economics and Management Science (BDPEMS).
    6. Callander, Steven & Wilkie, Simon, 2007. "Lies, damned lies, and political campaigns," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 262-286, August.
    7. Vaccari, Federico, 2021. "Competition in Signaling," MPRA Paper 106071, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Pokladniková, Vlasta & Yildiz, Muhamet, 2009. "Moderation of an ideological party," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 516-537, March.
    9. Maarten C. W. Janssen & Mariya Teteryatnikova, 2017. "Mystifying but not misleading: when does political ambiguity not confuse voters?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(3), pages 501-524, September.
    10. Nichole Szembrot, 2017. "Are voters cursed when politicians conceal policy preferences?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 25-41, October.
    11. B. Douglas Bernheim & Sergei Severinov, 2003. "Bequests as Signals: An Explanation for the Equal Division Puzzle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(4), pages 733-764, August.
    12. Barney Hartman‐Glaser & Benjamin Hébert, 2020. "The Insurance Is the Lemon: Failing to Index Contracts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(1), pages 463-506, February.
    13. Juan Carlos Berganza, 2000. "Politicians, voters and electoral processes: an overview," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 24(3), pages 501-543, September.
    14. Tangeras, T.P., 1998. "On the Role of Public Opinion Polls in Political Competition," Papers 655, Stockholm - International Economic Studies.
    15. Sivan Frenkel, 2014. "Competence and ambiguity in electoral competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 219-234, April.
    16. Haifeng Huang, 2010. "Electoral Competition When Some Candidates Lie and Others Pander," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 333-358, July.
    17. Peter Vida & Takakazu Honryo & Helmuts Azacis, 2022. "Strong Forward Induction in Monotonic Multi-Sender Signaling Games," THEMA Working Papers 2022-08, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    18. Bernheim, B. Douglas & Bodoh-Creed, Aaron L., 2023. "Pervasive signaling," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 18(1), January.
    19. Sourav Bhattacharya, 2006. "Campaign Rhetoric and the Hide-and-Seek Game," Working Paper 326, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jun 2007.
    20. Cesar Martinelli & Akihiko Matsui, 1999. "Policy Reversals: Electoral Competition with Privately Informed Parties," Working Papers 9905, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM, revised Jan 2000.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political Parties; Campaigning;

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D89 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0568. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Elisabeth Gustafsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iuiiise.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.