Electoral accountability and selection with personalized information aggregation

DOI10.1016/J.GEB.2023.04.001MaRDI QIDQ6160125zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Anqi Li, Lin Hu

Publication date 23 June 2023

Published in Games and Economic Behavior (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.03761

zbMATH Keywords

electoral accountability and selectionpersonalized information aggregationrational inattention

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Voting theory (91B12)

Abstract: We study a model of electoral accountability and selection whereby heterogeneous voters aggregate incumbent politician's performance data into personalized signals through paying limited attention. Extreme voters' signals exhibit an own-party bias, which hampers their ability to discern the good and bad performances of the incumbent. While this effect alone would undermine electoral accountability and selection, there is a countervailing effect stemming from partisan disagreement, which makes the centrist voter more likely to be pivotal. In case the latter's unbiased signal is very informative about the incumbent's performance, the combined effect on electoral accountability and selection can actually be a positive one. For this reason, factors that carry a negative connotation in every political discourse -- such as increasing mass polarization and shrinking attention span -- have ambiguous accountability and selection effects in general. Correlating voters' signals, if done appropriately, unambiguously improves electoral accountability and selection and, hence, voter welfare.

Recommendations

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Cites work

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• Monitoring a common agent: Implications for financial contracting
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• SPECIALIZED LEARNING AND POLITICAL POLARIZATION
• The Economics of Career Concerns, Part I: Comparing Information Structures
• Would rational voters acquire costly information?

Cited in

(1)

• A structural model of electoral accountability

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