Political Support and Candidate Choice

This paper proposes a simple model of political supporters in an environment of spatial political competition. We assume that supporters are driven by sympathy for a candidate with similar preferences on their side of the policy space and by fear of a candidate with different preferences on the other side. If parties maximize support in their candidate selection, political platforms can diverge significantly. We show that radical candidates have a positive effect on support for the other party. If candidate choice internalizes this externality, platforms converge and overall support decreases to a minimum.Party competition, activism, conflict

Government Transfers and Political Support

We estimate the impact of a large anti-poverty program - the Uruguayan PANES - on political support for the government that implemented it. The program mainly consisted of a monthly cash transfer for a period of roughly two and half years. Using the discontinuity in program assignment based on a pre-treatment score, we find that beneficiary households are 21 to 28 percentage points more likely to favor the current government (relative to the previous government). Impacts on political support are larger among poorer households and for those near the center of the political spectrum, consistent with the probabilistic voting model in political economy. Effects persist after the cash transfer program ends. We estimate that the annual cost of increasing government political support by 1 percentage point is roughly 0.9% of annual government social expenditures.Conditional cash transfers, redistributive politics, voting, regression discontinuity

Political competition and support for agriculture

This paper investigates whether political competition plays an important role in determining the level of agricultural protection. In order to do so, we exploit variation in political and economic data from 74 developing and developed countries for the post-war period. Our results robustly show that the level of agricultural distortions is the higher, the higher is the level of political competition. We show that political competition may importantly complement other institutional aspects in determining policy choices. We investigate the heterogeneous effects of political competition across different electoral rules (majoritarian vs. proportional), forms of government (coalition vs. single-party) and level of incomes. --Political competition,constitutional rules,agricultural distortions

Political strategies of external support for democratization

Political strategies of external support to democratization are contrasted and critically examined in respect of the United States and European Union. The analysis begins by defining its terms of reference and addresses the question of what it means to have a strategy. The account briefly notes the goals lying behind democratization support and their relationship with the wider foreign policy process, before considering what a successful strategy would look like and how that relates to the selection of candidates. The literature's attempts to identify strategy and its recommendations for better strategies are compared and assessed. Overall, the article argues that the question of political strategies of external support for democratization raises several distinct but related issues including the who?, what?, why?, and how? On one level, strategic choices can be expected to echo the comparative advantage of the "supporter." On a different level, the strategies cannot be divorced from the larger foreign policy framework. While it is correct to say that any sound strategy for support should be grounded in a theoretical understanding of democratization, the literature on strategies reveals something even more fundamental: divergent views about the nature of politics itself. The recommendations there certainly pinpoint weaknesses in the actual strategies of the United States and Europe but they have their own limitations too. In particular, in a world of increasing multi-level governance strategies for supporting democratization should go beyond preoccupation with just an "outside-in" approach

New Hampshire Voters Overwhelmingly Support Political Reform 10/07/13

New Hampshire residents believe that money and special interests are what influences Congress, not their constituents. Most Granite Staters believe that political reform is a necessary step to solve national problems and they are supportive of specific reforms such as an open primary system and term limits. Nearly all measures showed bipartisan agreement

Economic Growth and the Rise of Political Extremism

In many western democracies, political parties with extreme platforms challenge more moderate incumbents. This paper analyses the impact of economic growth on the support for extreme political platforms. We provide a theoretical argument in favor of growth effects (as opposed to level effects) on the support for extreme political parties and we empirically investigate the relationship between growth and extremist votes. Lower growth rates benefit right-wing and nationalist parties, but do not have a robust positive effect on the support for communist parties. Our estimates indicate that extreme political platforms are unlikely to gain majorities in OECD countries, unless there is an extreme drop in the GDP per capita growth rate.political regimes, political extremism, economic growth

Political risk in light rail transit PPP projects

Since 2003 public-private partnerships (PPPs) have represented between 10 and 13.5% of the total investment in public services in the UK. The macro-economic and political benefits of PPPs were among the key drivers for central government's decision to promote this form of procurement to improve UK public services. Political support for a PPP project is critical and is frequently cited as the most important critical success factor. This paper investigates the significance of political support and reviews the treatment of political risk in a business case by the public sector project sponsor for major UK-based light rail transit PPP projects during their development stage. The investigation demonstrates that in the early project stages it is not traditional quantitative Monte Carlo risk analysis that is important; rather it is the identification and representation of political support within a business case together with an understanding of how this information is then used to inform critical project decisions

Fiscal centralization and the political process

We study the dynamic support for fiscal decentralization in a political agency model from the perspective of a region. We show that corruption opportunities are lower under centralization at each period of time. However, centralization makes more difficult for citizens to detect corrupt incumbents. Thus, corruption is easier under centralization for low levels of political competition. We show that the relative advantage of centralization depends negatively on the quality of the local political class, but it is greater if the center and the region are subject to similar government productivity shocks. When we endogenize the quality of local politicians, we establish a positive link between the development of the private sector and the support for decentralization. Since political support to centralization evolves over time, driven either by economic/political development or by exogenous changes in preferences over public good consumption, it is possible that voters are (rationally) discontent about it. Also, preferences of voters and the politicians about centralization can diverge when political competition is weak.Decentralization, Centralization, Political agency, Quality of politicians, Corruption

The political economy of reforms: Empirical evidence from post- communist transition in the 1990s

Using a novel data set from post-communist countries in the 1990s, this paper examines linkages between political constraints, economic reforms and growth. A dynamic panel analysis suggests public support for reform is negatively associated with income inequality and unemployment. Both the ex post and ex ante political constraints of public support affect progress in economic reform, which in turn influences economic growth. The findings highlight that while economic reforms are needed to foster growth, they must be designed so that they do not undermine political support for reform.Political constraints, economic reform, transition, growth, dynamic panel models