Electoral reform in Asia: institutional engineering against "money politics"

This paper argues that the concept of intraparty competition – as opposed to interparty competition – provides the most useful lens through which to understand recent cases of electoral reform in East Asia. Various democracies in the region have over the past two decades replaced ‘extreme’ systems on the intraparty dimension with more moderate types. Pressure for reform built up as these systems were increasingly blamed for a number of social ills, such as "money politics" and economic mismanagement. The paper will conclude by arguing that the effect of electoral reform has been rather limited. In particular, particularistic strategies of voter mobilization – such as clientelism and vote buying – remain an important electoral tool for many politicians

Party objectives in the "Divide a dollar" electoral competition

Cet article se place dans le cadre d'un modèle de pure politique redistributive entre trois groupes d'électeurs. Il compare deux variantes de la compétition électorale entre deux partis, l'objectif d'un parti étant soit la probabilité de victoire ("jeu du tournoi majoritaire"), soit le nombre de voix obtenues ("jeu de la pluralité"). On exhibe des équilibres en stratégies mixtes pour ces deux variantes. En moyenne tous les individus sont traités de la même manière dans le jeu de la pluralité, alors que le jeu du tournoi majoritaire favorise les individus appartenant aux petits groupes.Compétition électorale;Stratégies mixtes;Blotto;Objectif des partis

Party Platforms in Electoral Competition with many constituencies

This paper uses the Hotelling-Downs spatial model of electoral competition between candidates to explore competition between political parties. Two parties choose platforms in a unidimensional policy space, and then in a continuum of constituencies with different median voters candidates from the two parties compete in first-past-the-post elections. Departing from party platform is costly enough that candidates do not take the median voters preferred position in each constituency. In equilibrium, parties acting in their candidates best interests differentiate when one party locates right of center, the other prefers to locate strictly left of center to carve out a home turf,  consituencies that can be won with little to no deviation from party platform. Hence, Downsian competition that pulls candidates together pushes parties apart. Decreasing campaign costs  increases party differentiation as the leftist party must move further from the rightist party to carve out its home turf. For a range of costs, parties take more extreme positions than their most extreme candidates. For small costs, parties are too extreme to maximize voter welfare, whereas for large costs they are not extreme enough.electoral competition, spatial competition, Hotelling-Downs model

Signaling Competence in Elections

We analyze how political candidates can signal their competence and show that polarization might be a way of doing this. For this purpose, we study a unidimensional Hotelling-Downs model of electoral competition in which a fraction of candidates have the ability to correctly observe a policy-relevant state of the world. We show that candidates tend to polarize, even in the absence of policy bias. This is because proposing an extreme platform has a competence signaling effect and has a strictly higher probability of winning than proposing a median platform. The degree of polarization depends on how uncertain is the state of the world

Ambiguity in electoral competition.

L'article propose une théorie de la compétition électorale ambigüe. Une plate-forme est ambigüe si les votants peuvent l'interpréter de différentes manières. Une telle plate-forme met plus ou moins de poids sur sur les différentes options possibles de sorte qu'elle est plus ou moins facilement interprétée comme une politique ou une autre. On fait l'hypothèse que les partis politiques peuvent contrôler exactement leurs plate-formes mais ne peuvent pas cibler celles-ci vers les votants individuellement. Chaque électeur vote d'après son interprétation des plate-formes des partis mais est averse à l'ambiguité. On montre que ce jeu de compétition électorale n'a pas d'équilibre de Nash. Cependant ses stratégies max-min sont les stratégies optimales du jeu Downsien en stratégies mixtes. De plus, si les partis se comportent de manière suffisament prudente par rapport à l'aversion pour l'ambiguité des électeurs, ces mêmes stratégies forment un équilibre.Compétition électorale;Ambigüité;Comportement prudent;Jeux à somme nulle

Party platforms in electoral competition with heterogeneous constituencies

This paper shows how political parties differentiate to reduce electoral competition. Two parties choose platforms in a unidimensional policy space, and then candidates from these parties compete for votes in a continuum of constituencies with different median voters. Departing from their parties' platforms is costly enough that candidates do not take the median voter's preferred position in every constituency. Because the candidate whose party is located closer to the median voter gets a higher expected payoff, parties acting in their candidates' best interests differentiate---when one party locates right of center, the other prefers to locate strictly left of center to carve out a "home turf,'' constituencies that can be won with little to no deviation from the platform of the candidate's party. Hence, competition that pulls candidates together pushes parties apart. Decreasing "campaign costs'' increases party differentiation as the leftist party must move further from the rightist party to carve out its home turf, as does increasing heterogeneity across constituencies.Political parties, median voter, Hotelling competition

Political Competition over Distortionary Taxation

Political parties compete over income tax functions, and voters vote and decide whether to pay full taxes or to make an e®ort to modify their tax bur- den. We show that political parties only propose e±cient income tax func- tions, in a similar manner to the probabilistic voting theory. Regarding the shape of income tax functions, it need not be the case that the majority of vot- ers prefer progressive taxation to regressive taxation as a consequence of the distortions. Nevertheless, we prove that the political appeal for progressivity is restored under mild conditions.Income taxation, Distortions, Efficiency, Progressivity, Political competition

When do interest groups contact bureaucrats rather than politicians? Evidence on fire alarms and smoke detectors from Japan

What determines whether interest groups choose to contact politicians or bureaucrats? Despite the importance of this question for policymaking, democracy, and some prominent principal-agent understandings of politics, it is relatively unexplored in the literature. We argue that government stability plays a major part in interest groups' decisions. That is, central to interest groups' decisions is their assessment of the likelihood that politicians currently in power will continue to be in the future. We deduce logical, but totally contrasting hypotheses, about how interest groups lobby under such conditions of uncertainty and then test these using a heteroskedastic probit model that we apply to a unique longitudinal survey of interest groups in Japan. We find that when it is unclear if the party controlling the government will maintain power in the future, interest groups are more likely to contact the bureaucracy. When it is believed that the party in power will retain control for a considerable period, interest groups are more inclined to contact politicians. In addition, during times of government uncertainty, interest groups that are supportive of the governing party (or parties) are more likely to contact politicians and those that are less supportive will be more likely to contact bureaucrats. © 2013 Cambridge University Press