TY  - BOOK
AU  - Grossman,Gene
AU  - Helpman,Elhanan
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 1994///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
N1  - October 1994; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - 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
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w4877
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w4877
ER  -