IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mpg/wpaper/2008_50.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Felix Bierbrauer & Lydia Mechtenberg, 2008. "Winners and Losers of Early Elections: On the Welfare Implications of Political Blockades and Early Elections," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2008_50, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    • Handle: RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2008_50
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2008_50online.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jussi Keppo & Lones Smith & Dmitry Davydov, 2006. "Optimal Electoral Timing: Exercise Wisely and You May Live Longer," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1565, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    2. Diermeier, Daniel & Merlo, Antonio, 2000. "Government Turnover in Parliamentary Democracies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 46-79, September.
    3. Minford, Patrick & Peel, David, 1982. "The political theory of the business cycle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 253-270.
    4. Lupia, Arthur & Strøm, Kaare, 1995. "Coalition Termination and the Strategic Timing of Parliamentary Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(3), pages 648-665, September.
    5. John E. Roemer, 1999. "The Democratic Political Economy of Progressive Income Taxation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(1), pages 1-20, January.
    6. Bernard Caillaud & Jean Tirole, 2002. "Parties as Political Intermediaries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1453-1489.
    7. Alastair Smith, 1996. "Endogenous Election Timing In Majoritarian Parliamentary Systems," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(2), pages 85-110, July.
    8. Balke, Nathan S, 1990. "The Rational Timing of Parliamentary Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 65(3), pages 201-216, June.
    9. Kayser, Mark Andreas, 2005. "Who Surfs, Who Manipulates? The Determinants of Opportunistic Election Timing and Electorally Motivated Economic Intervention," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(1), pages 17-27, February.
    10. Lachler, Ulrich, 1982. "On political business cycles with endogenous election dates," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 111-117, February.
    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. Fu, Qiang & Li, Ming, 2014. "Reputation-concerned policy makers and institutional status quo bias," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 15-25.

    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. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2008-071 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political business cycles 40 years after Nordhaus," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 235-259, January.
    3. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Post-Print hal-01291401, HAL.
    4. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01291401, HAL.
    5. Antonio Merlo, 2005. "Whither Political Economy? Theories, Facts and Issues," PIER Working Paper Archive 05-033, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Dec 2005.
    6. Lesmono, Dharma & Tonkes, Elliot & Burrage, Kevin, 2009. "Opportunistic timing and manipulation in Australian Federal Elections," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 192(2), pages 677-691, January.
    7. Michael Becher, 2019. "Dissolution power, confidence votes, and policymaking in parliamentary democracies," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(2), pages 183-208, April.
    8. George Tridimas, 2017. "Constitutional choice in ancient Athens: the evolution of the frequency of decision making," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 209-230, September.
    9. Jussi Keppo & Lones Smith & Dmitry Davydov, 2006. "Optimal Electoral Timing: Exercise Wisely and You May Live Longer," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1565, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    10. J. Stephen Ferris & Derek E. H. Olmstead, 2017. "Fixed versus flexible election terms: explaining innovation in the timing of Canada’s election cycle," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 117-141, June.
    11. Heckelman, Jac C., 2001. "Partisan Business Cycles under Variable Election Dates," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 261-275, April.
    12. Jac C. Heckelman & Hakan Berument, 1998. "Political Business Cycles and Endogenous Elections," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 987-1000, April.
    13. Voia, Marcel-Cristian & Ferris, J. Stephen, 2013. "Do business cycle peaks predict election calls in Canada?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 102-118.
    14. J. Stephen Ferris & Derek E. H. Olmstead, 2012. "Fixed versus Flexible Election Cycles: Explaining innovation in the timing of Canada’s Election Cycle," Carleton Economic Papers 12-04, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 01 Dec 2016.
    15. Becher, Michael, 2018. "Dissolution Power, Confidence Votes, and Policymaking in Parliamentary Democracies," TSE Working Papers 18-945, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    16. J. Stephen Ferris & Marcel-Cristian Voia, 2011. "Does the expectation or realization of a federal election precipitate Canadian output growth?," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 44(1), pages 107-132, February.
    17. Sven de Vries & Rakesh Vohra, 2000. "A Structural Model of Government Formation," Discussion Papers 1297, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    18. Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Mandar Oak, 2022. "Party Formation and Coalitional Bargaining in a Model of Proportional Representation," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-17, June.
    19. Daniel Diermeier & Hulya Eraslan & Antonio Merlo, 2002. "Bicameralism and Government Formation, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 07-010, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Feb 2007.
    20. André Blais & Elisabeth Gidengil & Neil Nevitte & Richard Nadeau, 2004. "Do (Some) Canadian Voters Punish a Prime Minister for Calling a Snap Election?," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 52(2), pages 307-323, June.
    21. Klaas Beniers & Robert Dur, 2007. "Politicians’ motivation, political culture, and electoral competition," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 14(1), pages 29-54, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    early elections; political blockades; ideological rigidities;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:mpg:wpaper:2008_50. 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: Marc Martin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mppggde.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.