IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jpbect/v10y2008i5p891-922.html

Playing for Your Own Audience: Extremism in Two‐Party Elections

Author

Listed:
  • GÁBOR VIRÁG

Abstract

This paper considers a two‐party election with a single‐dimensional policy space. We assume that each voter has a higher probability of observing the position of the party he is affiliated with than the position of the other party, an assumption that is consistent with the National Election Studies (NES) electoral data set. In equilibrium, the two parties locate away from the median, because the voters who dislike a party's platform observe its policy choice with a lower probability, and its own audience like policy choices that cater to its taste. As the asymmetry in voter information or the cost of voting increases, the parties adopt more extreme platforms, while if there are fewer extreme voters the opposite effect occurs. Making voters more symmetrically informed about the two parties' platforms increases the welfare of society, while asymmetric information acquisition by the voters is worse than no information acquisition at all.

Suggested Citation

  • Gábor Virág, 2008. "Playing for Your Own Audience: Extremism in Two‐Party Elections," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(5), pages 891-922, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:10:y:2008:i:5:p:891-922
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2008.00391.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2008.00391.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2008.00391.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward L. Glaeser & Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2005. "Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(4), pages 1283-1330.
    2. Arianna Degan & Antonio Merlo, 2006. "Do Voters Vote Sincerely?," PIER Working Paper Archive 06-008, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    3. Matthew Turner & Quinn Weninger, 2005. "Meetings with Costly Participation: An Empirical Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(1), pages 247-268.
    4. Stefano DellaVigna & Ethan Kaplan, 2007. "The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1187-1234.
    5. Wittman, Donald, 1983. "Candidate Motivation: A Synthesis of Alternative Theories," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 142-157, March.
    6. Assar Lindbeck & Jörgen Weibull, 1987. "Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 273-297, January.
    7. John Ledyard, 1984. "The pure theory of large two-candidate elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 7-41, January.
    8. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    9. Timothy Besley & Andrea Prat, 2006. "Handcuffs for the Grabbing Hand? Media Capture and Government Accountability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 720-736, June.
    10. Martin J. Osborne & Jeffrey S. Rosenthal & Matthew A. Turner, 2005. "Meetings with Costly Participation: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1351-1354, September.
    11. John E. Roemer, 1997. "Political-economic equilibrium when parties represent constituents: The unidimensional case," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 14(4), pages 479-502.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Duggan & César Martinelli, 2008. "The Role of Media Slant in Elections and Economics," Wallis Working Papers WP54, University of Rochester - Wallis Institute of Political Economy.
    2. John Duggan & Cesar Martinelli, 2008. "Rational Expectations and Media Slant," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000001844, UCLA Department of Economics.
    3. Shadmehr, Mehdi, 2015. "Extremism in revolutionary movements," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 97-121.
    4. Benjamin Ogden, 2017. "The Imperfect Beliefs Voting Model," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2017-20, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    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. Jo Thori Lind & Dominic Rohner, 2017. "Knowledge is Power: A Theory of Information, Income and Welfare Spending," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(336), pages 611-646, October.
    2. De Donder, Philippe & Gallego, Maria, 2017. "Electoral Competition and Party Positioning," TSE Working Papers 17-760, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    3. Kamada, Yuichiro & Kojima, Fuhito, 2013. "The equivalence between costly and probabilistic voting models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 179-185.
    4. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias, 2010. "The binary policy model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 661-688, March.
    5. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    6. Daniel W Gingerich, 2014. "Yesterday’s heroes, today’s villains: Ideology, corruption, and democratic performance," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 26(2), pages 249-282, April.
    7. 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.
    8. Kovenock, Dan & Roberson, Brian, 2011. "Non-partisan ‘get-out-the-vote’ efforts and policy outcomes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 728-739.
    9. Albert Solé-Ollé, 2006. "The effects of party competition on budget outcomes: Empirical evidence from local governments in Spain," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 126(1), pages 145-176, January.
    10. Donati, Dante, 2023. "Mobile Internet access and political outcomes: Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    11. JuanD. Carrillo & Micael Castanheira, 2008. "Information and Strategic Political Polarisation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 845-874, July.
    12. Alejandro Saporiti, 2010. "Power, ideology, and electoral competition," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1003, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    13. Alejandro Saporiti, 2008. "Existence and Uniqueness of Nash Equilibrium in Electoral Competition Games: The Hybrid Case," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(5), pages 827-857, October.
    14. Hideo Konishi & Chen-Yu Pan, 2020. "Silent promotion of agendas: campaign contributions and ideological polarization," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 93-117, January.
    15. Marcus Berliant & Pierre C. Boyer, 2024. "Politics and income taxes: Progress and progressivity," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 26(4), August.
    16. Archishman Chakraborty & Parikshit Ghosh, 2016. "Character Endorsements and Electoral Competition," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 277-310, May.
    17. Li Hu & Anqi Li, 2018. "The Politics of Attention," Papers 1810.11449, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2019.
    18. Jimmy Chan & Daniel Stone, 2013. "Media proliferation and partisan selective exposure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 467-490, September.
    19. Alexander Dyck & David Moss & Luigi Zingales, 2013. "Media versus Special Interests," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(3), pages 521-553.
    20. Drouvelis, Michalis & Saporiti, Alejandro & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2014. "Political motivations and electoral competition: Equilibrium analysis and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 86-115.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    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:bla:jpbect:v:10:y:2008:i:5:p:891-922. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/apettea.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.