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The Politics of Ambiguity

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Author Info
Alberto Alesina
Alex Cukierman

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Abstract

Politicians have generally two motives: they wish to hold office as long as possible and wish to implement their preferred policies. Thus they face a trade-off between the policies which maximize their choices of reelection and their most preferred policies (or the policies most preferred by the constituency which they represent). This paper analyzes this trade-off in a dynamic electoral model in which the voters are not fully informed about the preferences of the incumbent. First, we show that in general there is incomplete policy convergence: the incumbent follows a policy which is intermediate between the other party ideal policy and his own ideal policy. Second, we show that under some circumstances, the incumbent has an incentive to choose procedures which make it more difficult for voters to pinpoint his preferences with absolute precision. Thus, politicians may prefer to be ambiguous and "hide", at least up to a certain extent, their true preferences. This result holds for a wide range of parameter values and, in some range, even if voters are risk averse.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 2468.

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Date of creation: Dec 1987
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2468

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Wittman, Donald, 1977. "Candidates with policy preferences: A dynamic model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 180-189, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Cukierman, Alex & Meltzer, Allan H, 1986. "A Positive Theory of Discretionary Policy, the Cost of Democratic Government and the Benefits of a Constitution," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 367-88, July.
  3. Kenneth Rogoff, 1990. "Equilibrium Political Budget Cycles," NBER Working Papers 2428, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Hinich, Melvin J., 1977. "Equilibrium in spatial voting: The median voter result is an artifact," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 208-219, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Alesina, Alberto, 1987. "Macroeconomic Policy in a Two-Party System as a Repeated Game," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 102(3), pages 651-78, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Coughlin, Peter & Nitzan, Shmuel, 1981. "Directional and local electoral equilibria with probabilistic voting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 226-239, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Cukierman, Alex, 1991. " Asymmetric Information and the Electoral Momentum of Public Opinion Polls," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 70(2), pages 181-213, May.
  8. McKelvey, Richard D, 1975. "Policy Related Voting and Electoral Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 43(5-6), pages 815-43, Sept.-Nov. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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