Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics / Gene Grossman, Elhanan Helpman.

By:

Grossman, Gene

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w4877.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1994.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

D72 - Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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Abstract: We study the competition between two political parties for seats in a parliament. The parliament will set two types of policies: ideological and non-ideological. The parties have fixed positions on the ideological issues, but choose their non-ideological platforms to attract voters and campaign contributions. In this context, we ask: How do the equilibrium contributions from special interest groups influence the platforms of the parties? We show that each party is induced to behave as if it were maximizing a weighted sum of the aggregate welfares of informed voters and members of special interest groups. The party that is expected to win a majority of seats caters more to the special interests.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w4877 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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October 1994.

We study the competition between two political parties for seats in a parliament. The parliament will set two types of policies: ideological and non-ideological. The parties have fixed positions on the ideological issues, but choose their non-ideological platforms to attract voters and campaign contributions. In this context, we ask: How do the equilibrium contributions from special interest groups influence the platforms of the parties? We show that each party is induced to behave as if it were maximizing a weighted sum of the aggregate welfares of informed voters and members of special interest groups. The party that is expected to win a majority of seats caters more to the special interests.