IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upf/upfgen/1070.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An agenda-setting model of electoral competition

Author

Abstract

This paper presents a model of electoral competition focusing on the formation of the public agenda. An incumbent government and a challenger party in opposition compete in elections by choosing the issues that will key out their campaigns. Giving salience to an issue implies proposing an innovative policy proposal, alternative to the status-quo. Parties trade off the issues with high salience in voters’ concerns and those with broad agreement on some alternative policy proposal. Each party expects a higher probability of victory if the issue it chooses becomes salient in the voters’ decision. But remarkably, the issues which are considered the most important ones by a majority of votes may not be given salience during the electoral campaign. An incumbent government may survive in spite of its bad policy performance if there is no sufficiently broad agreement on a policy alternative. We illustrate the analytical potential of the model with the case of the United States presidential election in 2004.

Suggested Citation

  • Josep M. Colomer & Humberto Llavador, 2008. "An agenda-setting model of electoral competition," Economics Working Papers 1070, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Sep 2010.
    • Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1070
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/1070.pdf
    File Function: Whole Paper
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary S. Becker & Tomas J. Philipson & Rodrigo R. Soares, 2005. "The Quantity and Quality of Life and the Evolution of World Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 277-291, March.
    2. Gary S. Becker & Kevin M. Murphy & Robert Tamura, 1994. "Human Capital, Fertility, and Economic Growth," NBER Chapters, in: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education, Third Edition, pages 323-350, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Wittman, Donald, 1983. "Candidate Motivation: A Synthesis of Alternative Theories," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 142-157, March.
    4. Moradi, Alexander & Baten, Joerg, 2005. "Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa: New Data and New Insights from Anthropometric Estimates," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1233-1265, August.
    5. Goldin, Claudia, 1992. "Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195072709.
    6. Bloom, David E & Williamson, Jeffrey G, 1998. "Demographic Transitions and Economic Miracles in Emerging Asia," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 12(3), pages 419-455, September.
    7. David E. Bloom & Jeffrey D. Sachs, 1998. "Geography, Demography, and Economic Growth in Africa," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 29(2), pages 207-296.
    8. Barro, Robert J & Lee, Jong-Wha, 2001. "International Data on Educational Attainment: Updates and Implications," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 541-563, July.
    9. Barro, Robert J. & Lee, Jong-Wha, 1994. "Sources of economic growth," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 1-46, June.
    10. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias, 2010. "The binary policy model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 661-688, March.
    11. Pablo Amorós & M. Puy, 2010. "Indicators of electoral victory," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 239-251, July.
    12. Stanley L. Engerman & Kenneth Lee Sokoloff, 2002. "Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development Among New World Economies," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2002), pages 41-110, August.
    13. AMOROS, Pablo & PUY, M. Socorro, 2007. "Dialogue or issue divergence in the political campaign?," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2007084, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    14. Stokes, Donald E., 1963. "Spatial Models of Party Competition," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 57(2), pages 368-377, June.
    15. Riccardo Puglisi & Josep Colomer, 2005. "Issues, cleavages and parties: a critical review of the literature," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/10383, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    16. Dreze, Jean & Sen, Amartya, 2002. "India: Development and Participation," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780199257492.
    17. Gary S. Becker & Robert J. Barro, 1988. "A Reformulation of the Economic Theory of Fertility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(1), pages 1-25.
    18. RePass, David E., 1929. "Issue Salience and Party Choice," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(2), pages 389-400, June.
    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. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2012. "Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition," Working Papers 124, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    2. Elliott Ash & Massimo Morelli & Richard Van Weelden, 2015. "Elections and Divisiveness: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 21422, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Enriqueta Aragonès & Micael Castanheira & Marco Giani, 2015. "Electoral Competition through Issue Selection," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(1), pages 71-90, January.
    4. Salvador Barberà & Anke Gerber, 2022. "(Not) Addressing Issues in Electoral Campaigns," Working Papers 1353, Barcelona School of Economics.
    5. 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.
    6. Schipper, Burkhard C. & Woo, Hee Yeul, 2019. "Political Awareness, Microtargeting of Voters, and Negative Electoral Campaigning," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 14(1), pages 41-88, January.
    7. Zhang, Qiaoxi, 2020. "Vagueness in multidimensional proposals," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 307-328.
    8. Georgy Egorov, 2015. "Single-Issue Campaigns and Multidimensional Politics," NBER Working Papers 21265, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2014. "Political Awareness, Microtargeting of Voters, and Negative Electoral Campaigning," Working Papers 148, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    10. Burkhard Schipper & Hee Yeul Woo, 2012. "Political Awareness and Microtargeting of Voters in Electoral Competition," Working Papers 46, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    11. Stephen Ansolabehere & M. Socorro Puy, 2015. "Issue-salience, Issue-divisiveness and Voting Decisions," Working Papers 2015-01, Universidad de Málaga, Department of Economic Theory, Málaga Economic Theory Research Center.

    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. Enriqueta Camps & Stanley Engerman, 2008. "What Do Women Do?: World Population Growth and Fertility Patterns, 1960-2000," Working Papers 363, Barcelona School of Economics.
    2. Enriqueta Camps & Stanley Engerman, 2008. "World population growth and fertility patterns, 1960-2000. A simple model explaining the evolution of world's fertility during the second half of the 20th Century," Economics Working Papers 1107, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jun 2013.
    3. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Pia N. Malaney, 1999. "Demographic Change and Economic Growth in Asia," CID Working Papers 15, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    4. David E. BLOOM & Jocelyn E. FINLAY, 2009. "Demographic Change and Economic Growth in Asia," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 4(1), pages 45-64, June.
    5. Schultz, T. Paul, 2010. "Population and Health Policies," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4785-4881, Elsevier.
    6. Chin Hee Hahn & Chang-Gyun Park, 2010. "Demographic Transition, Human Capital Accumulation and Economic Growth: Some Evidence from Cross-Country and Korean Microdata," NBER Chapters, in: The Economic Consequences of Demographic Change in East Asia, pages 93-124, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Bloom, David E. & Canning, David & Hu, Linlin & Liu, Yuanli & Mahal, Ajay & Yip, Winnie, 2010. "The contribution of population health and demographic change to economic growth in China and India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 17-33, March.
    8. Bloom, David E. & Canning, David & Sevilla, Jaypee, 2004. "The Effect of Health on Economic Growth: A Production Function Approach," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 1-13, January.
    9. Matthias Doepke, 2004. "Accounting for Fertility Decline During the Transition to Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 347-383, September.
    10. Stephan Klasen & Janneke Pieters, 2015. "What Explains the Stagnation of Female Labor Force Participation in Urban India?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(3), pages 449-478.
    11. Klasen, Stephan & Pieters, Janneke, 2012. "Push or Pull? Drivers of Female Labor Force Participation during India's Economic Boom," IZA Discussion Papers 6395, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Do, Quy-Toan & Levchenko, Andrei A. & Raddatz, Claudio, 2016. "Comparative advantage, international trade, and fertility," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 48-66.
    13. Juan Cordoba & Marla Ripoll & Xiying Liu, 2019. "Accounting for the International Quantity-Quality Trade-off," 2019 Meeting Papers 156, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Chen, Derek H.C., 2004. "Gender equality and economic development : the role for information and communication technologies," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3285, The World Bank.
    15. Xiaohua Yu & Guoqing Zhao, 2009. "Chinese agricultural development in 30 years: A literature review," Frontiers of Economics in China, Springer;Higher Education Press, vol. 4(4), pages 633-648, December.
    16. Galor, Oded & Weil, David N, 1996. "The Gender Gap, Fertility, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 374-387, June.
    17. Mine Yilmazer & Serkan inar, 2015. "Human Capabilities and Economic Growth: A Comparative Human Capability Index," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 5(4), pages 843-853.
    18. Husain, Muhammad Jami, 2010. "Contribution of health to economic development: A survey and overview," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 4, pages 1-52.
    19. Matteo Cervellati & Uwe Sunde, 2011. "Life expectancy and economic growth: the role of the demographic transition," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 99-133, June.
    20. Wamboye, Evelyn & Adekola, Abel, 2013. "Foreign Aid, Legal Origin, Economic Growth and Africa’s Least Developed Countries," MPRA Paper 47846, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agenda; elections; political competition; issues; salience; agreement.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:upf:upfgen:1070. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.upf.edu/ .

    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.