Elections and Divisiveness: Theory and Evidence / Elliott Ash, Massimo Morelli, Richard Van Weelden.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ash, Elliott.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Morelli, Massimo.

Van Weelden, Richard.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w21422.

NBER working paper series no. w21422

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Elections and Divisiveness

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2015.

Summary:

This paper analyzes the effort allocation choices of incumbent politicians when voters are uncertain about politician preferences. There is a pervasive incentive to "posture" by over-providing effort to pursue divisive policies, even if all voters would strictly prefer to have a consensus policy implemented. As such, the desire of politicians to convince voters that their preferences are aligned with the majority of the electorate can lead them to choose strictly pareto dominated effort allocations. Transparency over the politicians' effort choices can re-enforce the distortions, and for some parameters can be bad both for incentivizing politicians to focus on socially efficient tasks and for allowing voters to select congruent politicians. We take our theoretical results to the data with an empirical analysis of how Members of the U.S. Congress allocate time across issues in their floor speeches. Consistent with the theory, we find evidence of political posturing due to elections among U.S. Senators. We also demonstrate empirically that, among U.S. House Members, increased transparency can lead to more divisive speech.

Notes:

Print version record

July 2015.