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Ideological Dissent in Downsian Politics

Author

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  • Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay
  • Manaswini Bhalla
  • Kalysan Chatterjee
  • Jaideep Roy

Abstract

We analyze the Hotelling-Downs model of a winner-take-all elections with sequential entry where n > 2 'office-seeking' candidates with privately known qualities arrive in an order to announce platform commitments and voters receive partially informative exogenous signals about quality of each contestant. We characterize two-party equilibria when the order of entry is exogenously given. In these equilibria, entry can occur in any 'round' with positive probability: high quality candidates signal their type through showing ideological dissent with the voters while low quality ones randomize between (mis)-signaling quality through dissent and staying out. An interesting implication of this is that while the presence of a partially informative press can keep low quality candidates out of competition up to a certain degree, electoral competition improves voter's information about candidate types beyond what the press can reveal. However this endogenous mechanism of strategic information transmission leads to a political polarization. We then endogenize the order of entry to show that in general some high quality candidates enter early and others enter late while all low quality candidates either stay out or enter late. Moreover, while extremism continues to signal quality, there must be a gradual moderation in ideology although information revelation is non-monotonic in time with full revelation for early and late entrants and only partial revelation for intermediate entrants.

Suggested Citation

  • Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Manaswini Bhalla & Kalysan Chatterjee & Jaideep Roy, 2014. "Ideological Dissent in Downsian Politics," Discussion Papers 14-04, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    • Handle: RePEc:bir:birmec:14-04
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    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
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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