The Transparency of Politics and the Quality of Politicians

Politics has always attracted the attention of the media, citizens organizations, and the general public. Recent years have also witnessed a global process of “spectacularization” of politics, which, among other things, has resulted in a dramatic increase in the amount of information available about many facets of political life. Politicians, for example, are public figures, and much of what they do is now the object of close public scrutiny. Nevertheless, the extent to which various aspects of what goes on within the political sector are observable from the outside, which we refer to as the transparency of politics, still varies a great deal across countries. For example, while in some countries all individual votes in the legislature are part of the public record (e.g., the United States and Sweden), this is not the case in others (e.g., Italy and Spain). Also, while many democracies have adopted disclosure laws that require political parties and politicians to report all the contributions they receive (e.g., Canada and the United Kingdom), such laws are not in place in several other countries (e.g., Austria and Finland). It is therefore interesting to ask whether the transparency of politics may be systematically related to political outcomes, and whether more transparency would lead to better outcomes. In particular, in this article, we analyze the relationship between the transparency of politics and the quality of politicians, and focus on the recruitment of politicians by political parties. Parties represent a fundamental institution of representative democracy, and are the political-sector analogues of firms in the market sector. By and large, politicians are affiliated with a party, and typically start their political careers by working for party organizations (see, e.g., Heinrich Best and Maurizio Cotta 2000). Hence, the recruiting decisions of parties determine the quality of the pool of politicians

A Structural Model of Turnout and Voting in Multiple Elections, Fourth Version

This paper develops a unified approach to study participation and voting in multiple elections. The theoretical setting combines an “uncertain-voter” model of turnout with a spatial model of voting behavior. We apply our framework to the study of turnout and voting in U.S. presidential and congressional elections. We structurally estimate the model using individual-level data for the 2000 elections, and quantify the relationships between observed individual characteristics and unobserved citizens’ ideological preferences, information, and civic duty. We then use the estimated model, which replicates the patterns of abstention, selective abstention, split-ticket voting, and straight-ticket voting observed in the data, to assess the effects of policies that may increase citizens’ information and sense of civic duty on their turnout and voting behavior.elections, turnout, selective abstention, split-ticket voting

"Identification of Stochastic Sequential Bargaining Models"

Stochastic sequential bargaining games (Merlo and Wilson (1995, 1998)) have found wide applications in various fields including political economy and macroeconomics due to their flexibility in explaining delays in reaching agreement. In this paper, we present new results in nonparametric identification of such models under different scenarios of data availability. First, with complete data on players’ decisions, the sizes of the surplus to be shared (cakes) and the agreed allocations, both the mapping from states to the total surplus (i.e. the "cake function") and the players’ common discount rate are identified, if the unobservable state variable (USV) is independent of observable ones (OSV), and the total surplus is strictly increasing in the USV conditional on the OSV. Second, when the cake size is only observed under agreements and is additively separable in OSV and USV, the contribution by OSV is identified provided the USV distribution satisfies some distributional exclusion restrictions. Third, if data only report when an agreement is reached but never report the cake sizes, we propose a simple algorithm that exploits exogenously given shape restrictions on the cake function and the independence of USV from OSV to recover all rationalizable probabilities for reaching an agreement under counterfactual state transitions. Numerical examples show the set of rationalizable counterfactual outcomes so recovered can be informative.Nonparametric identification, non-cooperative bargaining, stochastic sequential bargaining, rationalizable counterfactual outcomes

Political Careers or Career Politicians?

Two main career paths are prevalent among politicians in modern democracies: there are career politicians (i.e., politicians who work in the political sector until retirement), and political careers (i.e., there are politicians who leave politics before retirement and work in the private sector). In this paper, we propose a dynamic equilibrium model of the careers of politicians in a political economy with a private sector and a political sector, where individuals are heterogeneous with respect to their market ability and political skills. We characterize the conditions under which the two career paths emerge in equilibrium, and investigate the effects of monetary incentives and other features of the political-economic environment on the quality of politicians and their careers. Our analysis also provides a rationale for the existence and the survival of political parties.politicians, parties, careers in politics

Do Citizens Vote Strategically (if they vote at all)? Evidence from U.S. National Elections

Two prominent facts emerge from data on U.S. presidential and congressional elections. First, often people vote a split-ticket, that is, they vote for different parties' candidates for President and for Congress. Second, many citizens do not go to vote and, after going to vote, some decide to vote in one election but not in the other (typically more people vote for President than for Congress). This paper addresses two main questions: (1) To what extent is split-ticket voting the natural result of individuals who vote in each election according to their immediate policy preferences? In particular, what is the proportion of citizens who vote ''sincerely'' versus ''strategically''? (2) Can we simultaneously account for the patterns of abstention and voting observed in the data? To answer these questions, we propose and estimate, using individual-level data on voting choices in presidential and congressional elections from 1972 to 2000, a unified model of turnout and voting with asymmetric information. Our main findings are as follows. While a majority of citizens behave ''sincerely'', a significant proportion of citizens behave ''strategically''. Split-ticket voting is not only generated by strategic behavior but also by sincere behavior. In contrast to the implications of the ''balancing theories'', we find that a big portion of split-ticket behavior comes from extreme voters and that those middle-of-the-road voters that split their ticket do so as a result of voting according to their policy preferences in each election separately without any need for balancing purposes. We use the estimated model to conduct counterfactual experiments to assess the effect of sincere behavior, information, and abstention on electoral outcomes and the insurgency of divided governments.split-ticket, abstention, strategic voters

Do Voters Vote Sincerely?

In this paper we address the following question: To what extent is the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely testable or falsifiable? We show that using data only on how individuals vote in a single election, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is irrefutable, regardless of the number of candidates competing in the election. On the other hand, using data on how the same individuals vote in multiple elections, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is potentially falsifiable, and we provide general conditions under which the hypothesis can be tested. We then consider an application of our theoretical framework and assess whether the behavior of voters is consistent with sincere voting in U.S. national elections in the post-war period. We find that by and large sincere voting can explain virtually all of the individual-level observations on voting behavior in presidential and congressional U.S. elections in the data.

Do Voters Vote Sincerely? Second Version

In this paper we address the following question: To what extent is the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely testable or falsifiable? We show that using data only on how individuals vote in a single election, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is irrefutable, regardless of the number of candidates competing in the election. On the other hand, using data on how the same individuals vote in multiple elections, the hypothesis that voters vote sincerely is potentially falsifiable, and we provide general conditions under which the hypothesis can be tested. We then consider an application of our theoretical framework and assess whether the behavior of voters is consistent with sincere voting in U.S. national elections in the post-war period. We find that by and large sincere voting can explain virtually all of the individual-level observations on voting behavior in presidential and congressional U.S. elections in the data.voting, spatial models, falsifiability, testing.

Do Voters Vote Ideologically?, Third Version

In this paper we address the following question: To what extent is the hypothesis that voters vote “ideologically” (i.e., they always vote for the candidate who is ideologically “closest” to them) testable or falsifiable? We show that using data only on how individuals vote in a single election, the hypothesis that voters vote ideologically is irrefutable, regardless of the number of candidates competing in the election. On the other hand, using data on how the same individuals vote in multiple elections, the hypothesis that voters vote ideologically is potentially falsifiable, and we provide general conditions under which the hypothesis can be tested.voting, spatial models, falsifiability, testing

A Structural Model of Turnout and Voting in Multiple Elections

In this paper, we propose a unified approach to study participation and voting in multiple elections. The theoretical framework combines an “uncertain-voter” model of turnout with a spatial model of voting behavior. We apply our framework to study turnout and voting in U.S. national (presidential and congressional) elections, and structurally estimate the model using individual-level data for the 2000 elections. The estimated model replicates the patterns of abstention, selective abstention, split-ticket voting, and straight-ticket voting observed in the data. We also quantify the relationships between observed individual characteristics and unobserved citizens’ ideological preferences, information, and civic duty. Finally, we assess the effects of policies that may increase citizens’ information and sense of civic duty on their turnout and voting behavior.elections, turnout, selective abstention, split-ticket voting

Mediocracy

In this paper, we study the initial recruitment of individuals in the political sector. We propose an equilibrium model of political recruitment by a party who faces competition for political talent from the lobbying sector. We show that a political party may deliberately choose to recruit only mediocre politicians, in spite of the fact that it could afford to recruit better individuals who would like to become politicians. We argue that this finding may contribute to explain the observation that in many countries the political class is mostly composed of mediocre people.politicians, parties, political recruitment