Information, Closeness of Elections and Authoritarianism
نویسنده
چکیده
Often democracy is defeated by democratically elected leaders who pursue undemocratic policies. The present contribution seeks to explain how information can a¤ect the danger of incompetent or populist politicians being elected into o¢ ce. It is shown with the help of a voting model that both the proportion of informed voters in a society and the state of the economy matter for determining who gets elected and with what margin of victory. It is argued that a high proportion of uninformed voters can result in massive popular support for a "bad" party, which can lead to authoritarianism. JEL Classi cation: D72, D83, H11.
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