Electoral Competition with Informed and Uninformed Voters

1994 ◽  
Vol 88 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Baron
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Campaign Contributions ◽  
Public Financing ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
The Public ◽  
Degree Of Separation ◽  
Ideal Points ◽  
Increasing Function ◽  
The Ideal

I present a model of electoral competition in which candidates raise campaign contributions by choosing policies that benefit interest groups and then expend those contributions to influence voters who are uninformed about the policies. Informed voters, however, vote based on those policies, so candidates face a trade-off between choosing a policy to generate funds to attract the uninformed vote and choosing a policy to attract the informed vote. Electoral equilibria are characterized for two categories of policies: particularistic and collective. In the case of particularistic policies, the equilibrium policies of the candidates are separated if the proportion of uninformed voters is sufficiently high, and the degree of separation is an increasing function of that proportion. The model is extended to include the public financing of elections and incumbency advantages. For the case of collective policies, the candidates locate at the median of the ideal points of the informed voters, and contributions are zero.

Pareto-Improving Campaign Finance Policy

2004 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 628-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Coate
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Campaign Finance ◽  
Campaign Contributions ◽  
Public Financing ◽  
Finance Policy ◽  
Pareto Improving ◽  
Campaign Advertising ◽  
Contribution Limits

This paper argues that campaign finance policy, in the form of contribution limits and matching public financing, can be Pareto improving even under very optimistic assumptions concerning the role of campaign advertising and the rationality of voters. The optimistic assumptions are that candidates use campaign contributions to convey truthful information to voters about their qualifications for office and that voters update their beliefs rationally on the basis of the information they have seen.The argument also assumes that campaign contributions are provided by interest groups and that candidates can offer to provide policy favors to attract higher contributions.

Facing the Challenge of Democracy

2011 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Party Polarization

Citizens are political simpletons—that is only a modest exaggeration of a common characterization of voters. Certainly, there is no shortage of evidence of citizens' limited political knowledge, even about matters of the highest importance, along with inconsistencies in their thinking, some glaring by any standard. But this picture of citizens all too often approaches caricature. This book brings together leading political scientists who offer new insights into the political thinking of the public, the causes of party polarization, the motivations for political participation, and the paradoxical relationship between turnout and democratic representation. These studies propel a foundational argument about democracy. Voters can only do as well as the alternatives on offer. These alternatives are constrained by third players, in particular activists, interest groups, and financial contributors. The result: voters often appear to be shortsighted, extreme, and inconsistent because the alternatives they must choose between are shortsighted, extreme, and inconsistent.

Academic Freedom and the Politics of Truth

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Public Mind ◽  
Epistemic Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
The One ◽  
Rational Inquiry ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter argues that academic freedom is justified because it is an inherently epistemic practice that serves the ideals of democracy. With Dewey, it is argued that “The one thing that is inherent and essential [to the idea of a university] is the ideal of truth.” But far from being apolitical, the value of pursuing truth and knowledge—the value that justifies academic freedom, both within and without the public mind—is a fundamental democratic value, and for three reasons: the practices of academic inquiry exemplify rational inquiry of the kind needed for democratic deliberation; those practices serve to train students to pursue that kind of inquiry; and those practices are important engines of democratic dissent.

scholarly journals Estimating Dynamic Games of Electoral Competition to Evaluate Term Limits in US Gubernatorial Elections

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (7) ◽  
pp. 1824-1857 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Sieg ◽  
Chamna Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Dynamic Games ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Term Limits ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Political Candidates ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Perfect Monitoring ◽  
The Empirical Analysis

This paper shows how to identify and estimate, using standard semi-parametric techniques, a class of dynamic games with perfect monitoring, that have been at the frontier of recent research in political economy. The empirical analysis provides novel quantitative insights into the trade-off that voters face between ideology and ability, the differences in ability and ideology among parties and states, and the differences in preferences between political candidates and voters. We analyze the consequences of term limits and quantify their relative importance. Specifically, we characterize conditions under which term limits improve voters' welfare. (JEL C57, C73, D72)

Аmbiguous Temporality of Utopia

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Svetlana Neretina
Keyword(s):  
Private Property ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Creative Task ◽  
The Public ◽  
Theoretical Position ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Ideal

The article rejects the reading of Thomas More's Utopia as, first, a statement of More's own views on the ideal state and, accordingly, his definition not only as a humanist, but as a communist, and, secondly, an attempt is made to present the humanistic foundations of his ideas and ways of expressing them. These ways of expression are connected with the tropological way of his thinking, expressed through satire and irony, with an eye to ancient examples, which was characteristic of the philosophy, poetics and politics of humanism, one of the tasks of which was to try to build a new society (especially relevant in the period of geographical discoveries), architecture, an unprecedented ratio of natural objects (archimboldeski). The models for "Utopia" were the works of Plato, Lucian, and Cicero. It is written in the spirit of the times, with criticism of state structures, private property, the distinction between the private and the public, and openness to all ideas. Intellectual disorientation of readers is a specific creative task of More writer, his test of their ability to quickly change the optics, to consider history as an alternative world, radically different from our own, but connected with it. Thanks to an extremely pronounced intellectual tension, it goes beyond the limits of time, like the works of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Marx... Utopia can be represented as a dystopia, if we take into account the performative nature of the latter, which contributes to the instantaneous translation of words into action, realizing the world of utopia. Dystopia is the answer to utopia with a change of sign: about the same thing, changing the optics, you can say "yes" and "no". This means that in the modern world, indeed, and for a long time, virtual consciousness becomes little different from the real one, and imagination replaces the theoretical position, acquiring its form, turning theory into fiction. A hypothesis is put forward about the presence of many utopian countries in" Utopia": Achorians, Polylerites, Macarians, Anemolians.

“Education Is Our Occupation”

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (4) ◽  
pp. 1010-1015
Author(s):  
Celeste Langan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The Public ◽  
Robert Hass ◽  
Freedom Of Thought ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Res Publica

When my berkeley colleague the poet robert hass wrote for the new york times an account of the occupy cal event of 9 november 2011, he described the “strange contingencies” that struck his mind (even as the police baton struck his body). Since that day, when I was arrested (the police used a technique they call a hair-pull takedown) for linking arms with students to protect tents erected in solidarity with Occupy and in defiance of the campus's no-tents policy, I too have felt those contingencies. My decision to participate was no accident; I wanted to resist the conceptual and practical attenuation of the ideal of education as a res publica. But at the time of my arrest I had not yet recognized how much Occupy resonates with issues I have made the center of my scholarly life: vagrancy, mobility, freedom. This brief essay considers the new inflection Occupy has given to my understanding of the work of education. To exercise freedom of thought is not merely to engage heterodox ideas; it is to make thinking take place and take its time. It is to refuse attempts to constrain, by regulations concerning time, place, and manner, the public exercise of thinking.

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