Political Motivations and Electoral Competition: Equilibrium Analysis and Experimental Evidence

Michalis Drouvelis, Alejandro Saporiti and Nicolaas Vriend

No 710, Working Papers from Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance

Abstract: classical one-dimensional election game with two candidates. These candidates are interested in power and ideology, but their weights on these two motives are not necessarily identical. Apart from obtaining the well known median voter result and the two-sided policy differentiation outcome, the paper uncovers the existence of two new equilibrium configurations, called 'one-sided' and 'probabilistic' policy differentiation, respectively. Our analysis shows how these equilibrium configurations depend on the relative interests in power (resp., ideology) and the uncertainty about voters' preferences. The theoretical predictions are supported by the data collected from a laboratory experiment, as we observe convergence to the Nash equilibrium values at the aggregate as well as at the individual levels in all treatments, and the comparative statics effects across treatments are as predicted by the theory

Keywords: Electoral competition; Power; Ideology; Uncertainty; Nash equilibrium; Experimental evidence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C90 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-10-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sef/media/econ/research/wor ... 2013/items/wp710.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Political motivations and electoral competition: Equilibrium analysis and experimental evidence (2014)
Working Paper: Political Motivations and Electoral Competition: Equilibrium Analysis and Experimental Evidence (2011)
Working Paper: Political Motivations and Electoral Competition: Equilibrium Analysis and Experimental Evidence (2011)
Working Paper: Political Motivations and Electoral Competition: Equilibrium Analysis and Experimental Evidence (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:710

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nicholas Owen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).