Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ifs/ifsewp/06-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Electoral bias and policy choice: theory and evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Tim Besley

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and London School of Economics)

  • Ian Preston

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London)

Abstract
This paper develops a new approach to study how electoral bias in favor of one party due to the pattern of districting affects policy choice. We tie a commonly used measure of districting bias to the theory of party competition and show how this affects policy choice in theory. The utility of the approach is illustrated using data on local government in the U.K. The results suggest that reducing electoral bias leads parties to moderate their policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Tim Besley & Ian Preston, 2006. "Electoral bias and policy choice: theory and evidence," IFS Working Papers W06/03, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:06/03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifs.org.uk/wps/wp0603.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Myerson, Roger B., 1993. "Incentives to Cultivate Favored Minorities Under Alternative Electoral Systems," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(4), pages 856-869, December.
    2. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
    3. Stephen Coate & Brian Knight, 2007. "Socially Optimal Districting: A Theoretical and Empirical Exploration," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1409-1471.
    4. Besley, Tim & Persson, Torsten & Sturm, Daniel, 2005. "Political Competition and Economic Performance: Theory and Evidence from the United States," CEPR Discussion Papers 5138, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. George Stigler, 1972. "Economic competition and political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 91-106, September.
    6. Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 1997. "An Economic Model of Representative Democracy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 85-114.
    7. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2002. "Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262661314, April.
    8. King, Gary & Browning, Robert X, 1987. "Democratic Representation and Partisan Bias in Congressional Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(4), pages 1251-1273, December.
    9. Stephen Coate & Brian Knight, 2005. "Socially Optimal Districting," NBER Working Papers 11462, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2005. "The Economic Effects of Constitutions," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262661926, April.
    11. Holbrook, Thomas M. & Van Dunk, Emily, 1993. "Electoral Competition in the American States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(4), pages 955-962, December.
    12. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2004. "Constitutional Rules and Fiscal Policy Outcomes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 25-45, March.
    13. Gelman, Andrew & King, Gary, 1994. "Enhancing Democracy Through Legislative Redistricting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(3), pages 541-559, September.
    14. Ferejohn, John A., 1977. "On the Decline of Competition in Congressional Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(1), pages 166-176, March.
    15. Tufte, Edward R., 1973. "The Relationship between Seats and Votes in Two-Party Systems," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(2), pages 540-554, June.
    16. Rogers, Diane Lim & Rogers, John H, 2000. "Political Competition and State Government Size: Do Tighter Elections Produce Looser Budgets?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 105(1-2), pages 1-21, October.
    17. Ron Johnston & Colin Rallings & Michael Thrasher, 2002. "Electoral Success, Electoral Bias, and Labour Hegemony: Electoral System Effects in English Metropolitan Boroughs," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 34(7), pages 1303-1317, July.
    18. Alesina, Alberto, 1988. "Credibility and Policy Convergence in a Two-Party System with Rational Voters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 796-805, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2006:i:28:p:1-12 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Aidt, T.S. & Eterovic, D.S., 2007. "Give and Take: Political Competition, Participation and Public Finance in 20th Century Latin America," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0714, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    3. Luca Murrau, 2006. "An Overview Across the New Political Economy Literature," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(28), pages 1-12.
    4. Andina-Díaz, Ascensión & Feri, Francesco & Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A., 2021. "Institutional flexibility, political alternation, and middle-of-the-road policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    5. Galasso, Vincenzo & Nannicini, Tommaso, 2011. "Competing on Good Politicians," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(1), pages 79-99, February.
    6. Aidt, Toke S. & Eterovic, Dalibor S., 2011. "Political competition, electoral participation and public finance in 20th century Latin America," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 181-200, March.
    7. Andrew Pickering & James Rockey, 2013. "Ideology and the size of US state government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 443-465, September.
    8. Wolfgang Pesendorfer & Faruk Gul, 2007. "Strategic Redistricting," Levine's Bibliography 843644000000000351, UCLA Department of Economics.
    9. Fabio Padovano, 2013. "Are we witnessing a paradigm shift in the analysis of political competition?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 631-651, September.
    10. Bracco, Emanuele, 2013. "Optimal districting with endogenous party platforms," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 1-13.
    11. Andrew C. Pickering & James Rockey, 2012. "Ideology and the growth of US state government," Working Papers 2012/6, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    12. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    13. Scott Gehlbach & Konstantin Sonin & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2010. "Businessman Candidates," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 718-736, July.
    14. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9624.
    15. Antonio Merlo, 2005. "Whither Political Economy? Theories, Facts and Issues," PIER Working Paper Archive 05-033, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Dec 2005.
    16. Rafael Hortala-Vallve & Hannes Mueller, 2015. "Primaries: the unifying force," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 163(3), pages 289-305, June.
    17. Daron Acemoglu & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2011. "Emergence And Persistence Of Inefficient States," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 177-208, April.
    18. Braendle, Thomas, 2013. "Do Institutions Affect Citizens' Selection into Politics?," Working papers 2013/04, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    19. Hanna Ågren & Matz Dahlberg & Eva Mörk, 2007. "Do politicians’ preferences correspond to those of the voters? An investigation of political representation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 137-162, January.
    20. Valentino Larcinese, 2011. "Enfranchisement and Representation: Italy 1909-1913," STICERD - Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers Series 032, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    21. Fernando Ferreira & Joseph Gyourko, 2009. "Do Political Parties Matter? Evidence from U.S. Cities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 399-422.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:06/03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifsssuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.