In a global context in which authoritarian regimes often hold elections, defeating dictators at the polls can play a key role in transitions to democracy. When the opposition is allowed to campaign for votes in such elections, there are strong reasons to believe that its efforts will be more persuasive than those of the authoritarian incumbent. This article examines the effect of televised camp...

This paper explores the features of political economy in the dynamics of representative politics in India. Politics is seen as enhancing economic benefits through acquiring and maintenance of power in the realm of democratic set up. The system of representation is riddled with competitive populism. Emerging leaders and parties are forced to accommodate their ideologies in coping with competitiv...

We derive a unified statistical method with which one can produce substantially improved definitions and estimates of almost any feature of two-party electoral systems that can be defined based on district vote shares. Our single method enables one to calculate more efficient estimates, with more trustworthy assessments of their uncertainty, than each of the separate multifarious existing measu...

Positive effects of campaign spending on electoral outcomes have been found in several comparative, multiparty contexts, but very few of these systems use proportional representation. The few studies examining spending effects in multiparty elections have found that incumbent spending is no less effective than challenger spending, contrary to the vast bulk of empirical literature drawn from sin...

We study a model of elections in non-majoritarian systems that captures the link between competition in policies and competition in campaign spending. We argue that the overall competitiveness of the political arena depends both on the endogenous number of parties contesting the election and the endogenous level of campaign spending. These two dimensions are linked together through their combin...

We analyze a model in which voters are uncertain about the policy preferences of candidates. Two forces a¤ect the probability of electoral success: proximity to the median voter and campaign contributions. First, we show how campaign contributions a¤ect elections. Then we show how the candidates may wish to announce a range of policy preferences, rather than a single point. This strategic ambig...

We study a simple model of public opinion formation that posits that interaction between neighbouring agents leads to bandwagons in the dynamics of individual opinion choices, as well as in that of the aggregate process. We then analyze the implication that these findings have in terms of space-time allocation of fundings in an electoral campaign, where two candidates run in a winner-take-all e...