Winners and Losers of Early Elections: On the Welfare Implications of Political Blockades and Early Elections

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Winners and Losers of Early Elections: On the Welfare Implications of Political Blockades and Early Elections

Author Info

Felix Bierbrauer () (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn)
Lydia Mechtenberg (TU Berlin)

Abstract

We develop a dynamic model of political competition. Each party has a policymotivated ideological wing and an office-motivated opportunistic wing. A blockade arises if inner-party conflict stops policy implementation. We use this model to study whether early elections should be used to overcome a blockade. They have the advantage that urgent decisions are no longer delayed, and the disadvantage that unsuccessful governments gain additional time in office. This may give rise to a time inconsistency. Voters are in favour of a constitution without early elections. However, in the middle of a political crisis, they are willing to abandon it.

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Paper provided by Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in its series Working Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods with number 2008_50.

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Date of creation: Dec 2008
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Handle: RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2008_50

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information

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