Electoral Incentives, Political Risk-Taking and Policy Reform
نویسندگان
چکیده
We analyze the risk-taking behavior of political candidates who are uncertain about the values voters assign to various policy platforms. We show that the majoritarian and proportional electoral systems lead to different outcomes. The proportional system penalizes risky platforms more than the winner-take-all system. Since candidates choose “safer” platforms, in the proportional system voters face policy alternatives that are on average more similar to each other than under the winner-take-all system. Because the proportional system gives voters less variety in policy platforms, it is more likely to give rise to the “excessive sameness” hypothesized by Hotelling (1929). ∗Department of Economics, New York University, 19 W. 4th Street, New York, NY 10012. Lizzeri and Persico are grateful to the National Science Foundation for financial support.
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