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Informational Origins of Political Bias Towards Critical Groups of Voters

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  • Roger B. Myerson

Abstract

We show how nonsymmetric politicization can rise in a democracy where voters are distributed across several ex-ante symmetric sectors. The voters are uncertain about the administrative ability of an elected official. they observe the quality of her performance, which depends on her ability and her effort. the official can allocate her efforts symmetrically or nonsymmetrically across sectors. We show the existence of a nonsymmetric equilibrium, in which the official allocates mroe effort to administering one critical sector, becqause voters in other sectors rationally respond less to what they observe about the quality of to her administration.

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  • Roger B. Myerson, 1998. "Informational Origins of Political Bias Towards Critical Groups of Voters," Discussion Papers 1242, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:nwu:cmsems:1242
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    1. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    2. Roger B. Myerson, 1998. "Population uncertainty and Poisson games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 27(3), pages 375-392.
    3. Lohmann, Susanne, 1998. "An Information Rationale for the Power of Special Interests," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(4), pages 809-827, December.
    4. Feddersen, Timothy J & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1996. "The Swing Voter's Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 408-424, June.
    5. Myerson, Roger B., 1998. "Extended Poisson Games and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 111-131, October.
    6. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto & Maria Petrova & Ruben Enikolopov, 2008. "The Dracula effect: voter information and trade policy," Economics Working Papers 1296, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2020.
    2. Giacomo Ponzetto, 2008. "Asymmetric information and trade policy," Economics Working Papers 1253, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2010.
    3. Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto, 2011. "Heterogeneous Information and Trade Policy," 2011 Meeting Papers 189, Society for Economic Dynamics.

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