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1.
This study examines how coalition governments affect the size of government, measured by total central government expenditure as a share of GDP. Existing studies suggest that the presence of multiple political parties within ruling coalitions generate common pool resource problems or bargaining inefficiencies which, in turn, leads to more government spending when coalition governments are in office. We demonstrate that coalition governments have shorter time horizons than single party governments and use that finding to motivate a simple formal model. The model shows that coalition governments have greater incentives to increase government spending because of a lower discount factor in office. Results from empirical models estimated on a global sample of 111 democracies between 1975 and 2007 provide strong statistical support for the aforementioned theoretical prediction. The empirical results remain robust when we control for alternative explanations, employ different estimation techniques, and use different measures of government spending.  相似文献   

2.
This paper presents a new model of interest groups and policy formation in the legislature. In our setting, the already given party ideological predispositions and power distribution determine the expected policy outcome. Our analysis applies to the case of un-enforced or enforced party discipline as well as to two-party and multi-party (proportional representation) electoral systems. The interest groups’ objective is to influence the outcome in their favor by engaging in a contest that determines the final decision in the legislature. Our first result clarifies how the success of an interest group hinges on the dominance of its ideologically closer party and, in general, the coalition/opposition blocks of parties under un-enforced party or coalition/opposition discipline. Such dominance is defined in terms of ideological inclination weighted by power. Our second result clarifies how the success of an interest group hinges on the dominance of its ideology in the ruling coalition (party) in a majoritarian system with enforced coalition (party) discipline. We then clarify under what condition an interest group prefers to direct its lobbying efforts to two parties or the two coalition and opposition blocks of parties under un-enforced discipline rather than to the members of the ruling coalition (party) under enforced discipline. The lobbying efforts under un-enforced and enforced party discipline are also compared. Finally, we clarify the effect of ideological predispositions and power on the efforts of the interest groups.  相似文献   

3.
I study whether bailouts of local governments carry electoral benefits for state governments with a dataset covering 421 municipalities in the German state of Hesse over the period 1999–2011. I find that past bailouts have no economically significant effect on the municipality-level vote share of the parties that formed the state government in subsequent state elections. On the other hand, bailouts lead to vote increases for the ruling parties in subsequent local elections. On balance, these results suggest that electoral concerns are not the reason why central governments find it difficult to commit to a no-bailout policy.  相似文献   

4.
The present paper investigates the role of political institutions — namely, political regimes and electoral rules — in shaping the capacity of the government to implement policies that address citizens’ preferences, i.e., “good governance”. The empirical analysis, conducted on a panel of 80 democratic countries over the period 1996–2011, shows that the performance of the government depends on the interaction between electoral rules and political regimes. In particular, the performance of a government under a presidential regime improves when associated with a majoritarian electoral rule, while it worsens with a proportional electoral rule.  相似文献   

5.
Stochastic models of elections typically indicate that all parties, in equilibrium, will adopt positions at the electoral center. Empirical analyses discussed in this paper suggest that convergence of this kind is rarely observed. Here we examine a stochastic electoral model where parties differ in their valences – the electorally perceived, non-policy “quality” of the party leader. It is assumed that valence may either be exogenous, in the sense of being an intrinsic characteristic of the leader, or may be due to the contributions of party activists, who donate time and money and thus enhance electoral support for the party. Theorem 1 shows that vote maximization depends on balancing these two opposed effects. Theorem 2 provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for convergence to the electoral mean when activist valence is zero. The paper then examines empirical electoral models for the Netherlands circa 1980 and Britain in 1979, 1992 and 1997 and shows that party divergence from the electoral mean cannot be accounted for by exogenous valence alone. The balance condition suggests that the success of the Labour party in the election of 1997 can be attributed to a combination of high exogenous valence and pro-Europe activist support.  相似文献   

6.
This paper uses hedonic pricing to empirically estimate the value of publicly provided local goods and services in the constituencies of the ruling party relative to those of the opposition parties. To improve control for omitted variables that change smoothly over space, we use a regression discontinuity design to restrict the sample to houses that are near the electoral boundaries. Using resale market prices of public flats in Singapore, in some cases we find a moderate but highly statistically significant difference in housing prices across the electoral boundaries that separate the constituencies of the ruling party and the opposition parties.  相似文献   

7.
In a proportional representation system, apportionment methods are used to round the vote proportion of a party to an integer number of seats in parliament. Assuming uniformly distributed vote proportions, we derive the seat allocation distributions for stationary divisor methods. An important characteristic of apportionment methods are seat biases, that is, expected differences between actual seat numbers and ideal shares of seats, when the parties are ordered from largest to smallest. We obtain seat bias formulas for the stationary divisor methods and for the quota method of greatest remainders.Acknowledgement. We thank Friedrich Pukelsheim for many fruitful discussions.Received March 2004  相似文献   

8.
Forecasting the outcomes of national elections has become established practice in several democracies. In the present paper, we develop an economic voting model for forecasting the future success of the Austrian ‘grand coalition’, i.e., the joint electoral success of the two mainstream parties SPOE and OEVP, at the 2013 Austrian Parliamentary Elections. Our main argument is that the success of both parties is strongly tied to the accomplishments of the Austrian system of corporatism, that is, the Social Partnership (Sozialpartnerschaft  ), in providing economic prosperity. Using data from Austrian national elections between 1953 and 2008 (n=18n=18), we rely on the following predictors in our forecasting model: (1) unemployment rates, (2) previous incumbency of the two parties, and (3) dealignment over time. We conclude that, in general, the two mainstream parties benefit considerably from low unemployment rates, and are weakened whenever they have previously formed a coalition government. Further, we show that they have gradually been losing a good share of their voter basis over recent decades.  相似文献   

9.
Political economy has primarily paid attention to the principal‐agent relationship between citizens and politicians and the role of competition and institutions in disciplining political agents. However, as the electoral control of politicians and the credibility of policy commitments are limited, this perspective needs to be complemented with an economics of political selection that takes into account the heterogeneity in the quality of those elected to political office. We review the emerging literature, which investigates the institutional determinants of political selection. We discuss pay in politics, parties, their candidate selection procedures and electoral rules, institutions enhancing transparency in politics, and institutions which govern dual office holding in different branches of government. We argue that further comparative analyses are essential in order to gain an improved understanding of the impact that institutions have on political outcomes, not only via the channel of accountability, but also via the channel of selection.  相似文献   

10.
Legislative dissent has detrimental effects for both party and legislator, i.e., legislators depend on their party label for re-election, which value in turn depends in part on the party’s reputation of cohesiveness. Commonly dissent has been attributed to “extreme” preferences. I provide an informational rationale for dissent. Costly dissent allows the legislator to credibly signal information about his constituency’s preferences to the Cabinet. As a result the Cabinet can better calibrate its policies with the electorate’s preferences. Dissent is shown to depend on policy preferences as well a the legislators’ electoral strength, electoral volatility, and the cost of dissent. Finally, the results suggests that parties may sometimes benefit from tolerating some level of dissent. I am grateful to Christopher Kam, Randall Calvert, John Duggan, Mark Fey, Eduardo Leoni, Sona Golder, and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions. I also wish to thank the Political Institutions and Public Choice Program at Michigan State University for its support. All remaining errors are mine.  相似文献   

11.
《Economic Outlook》2015,39(2):5-12
  • Our modelling suggests that, based upon the three main parties’ economic and fiscal plans, the outcome of the General Election would have a modest, but not immaterial, impact on the UK's economic and fiscal outlook. The Liberal Democrat plans would deliver the strongest GDP growth, followed by Labour, but both would also involve higher debt servicing costs and a higher level of government debt than the plans of the Conservatives.
  • In our view these premiums on debt and borrowing costs are so small that it is very difficult to argue that the UK should pursue a more austere fiscal policy and reject the opportunity of stronger growth. But with the latest opinion polls suggesting that it is likely that the next government will be either a minority administration, or a coalition consisting of three or more parties, it is most likely that we will ultimately see some combination of the main parties' plans enacted.
  • The experience of 2010 suggests that such political uncertainty could mean that we see several bouts of market nervousness between now and May 7th, particularly in equity markets. However, such turbulence is likely to be short‐lived, providing that the resulting government is perceived to be strong and durable. Even a multi‐party coalition may not be such a bad thing, particularly if it watered down the more contentious policies of the main parties. The worst‐case scenario would be a weak minority government which is both unable to pass any meaningful legislation and unable to seek a fresh mandate. Such a scenario could seriously undermine confidence amongst investors and firms.
  相似文献   

12.
Fragmentation is an important dimension of political party systems. It concerns the proliferation of minor parties and the willingness of voters to vote for them. Past research relates party fragmentation to the voting system in a country; by Duverger's hypothesis, fragmentation should be highest in counties with proportional representation. The entropy measure is used to quantify fragmentation. The upper limit of fragmentation is analyzed in 24 countries, and the patterns of change in fragmentation are identified with mathematical difference equations, testing the idea that voters and parties evolve toward an equilibrium in fragmentation. The highest level of fragmentation is found comparable with a psychological limit on human information processing. In 17 of 22 countries, fragmentation moves toward an equilibrium, regardless of the type of voting system, and countries with higher equilibrium levels usually evolve more slowly. The results affirm the stability of democratic governments but raise questions about voters' strategies and suggest that some voters may try to control fragmentation when they vote.  相似文献   

13.
At the 2005 General Election the Labour Party won an overall majority of Parliamentary seats but won the votes of less than a quarter of the electorate. Such an outcome may raise concerns about the democratic legitimacy of the government. The introduction of the Null MP electoral system would solve this ‘legitimation crisis’: every abstention would be counted as a vote for a Null candidate, who, if elected in the usual first‐past‐the‐post way, would be assumed to vote against all legislation introduced by the government. Very different outcomes would have resulted had this electoral system been in place at the last two General Elections.  相似文献   

14.
This paper models a resource allocation problem in the political context. Voters and political candidates of two parties are positioned in each of n given electoral districts. We assume that each voter will vote for the candidate he is more attracted to. This attraction is modeled by an attraction function. Each of the parties now attempts to allocate a finite budget to maximize their objective, which is either the popular vote or the number of districts, in which the party has a majority. Individual scenarios are examined with respect to leader-follower solutions and Nash equilibria. The paper then describes a dynamic model that successively allocates existing funds plus additional donations to candidates in different electoral districts.  相似文献   

15.
The paper proposes an explanation to why electoral competition induces parties to state ambiguous platforms even if voters dislike ambiguity. A platform is ambiguous if different voters may interpret it as different policy proposals. An ambiguous platform puts more or less emphasis on alternative policies so that it is more or less easily interpreted as one policy or the other. I suppose that a party can monitor exactly this platform design but cannot target its communications to individuals one by one. Each individual votes according to her understanding of the parties’ platforms but dislikes ambiguity. It is shown that this electoral competition has no Nash equilibrium. Nevertheless its max–min strategies are the optimal strategies of the Downsian game in mixed strategies. Furthermore, if parties behave prudently enough and if the voters aversion to ambiguity is small enough, these strategies do form an equilibrium.  相似文献   

16.
Decentralization of the public health system should lead to health resources being managed more in line with citizens’ preferences. A decentralized system is more flexible in that it can better adapt resources to local needs. Moreover, if regional political parties have responsibility for public health policies, citizens will be able to elect those parties whose positions are more in line with their preferences. However, the role of political parties in public health management has received little attention in the literature. Focusing on the decision to provide reserve service capacity to deal with demand uncertainty, we analyse whether there have been differences between central and decentralized health authorities in Spain and whether these can be explained to some extent by the way different political parties manage the trade-off between being able to cover demand and the economic costs involved. Using data on Spanish public hospitals for the period 1996–2006, we model the difference between observed and potential output using an output-oriented distance function. Reserve capacity is modelled as a function of demand uncertainty, economic costs and the political party in power. We find differences in the way resources are managed by central government and decentralized authorities, even within the same political party. We also find differences between the decentralized authorities themselves according to the political party in power. We conclude that decentralization of public health in Spain has provided regional political authorities with greater flexibility to manage reserve capacity in line with citizens’ needs and preferences.  相似文献   

17.
The literature that investigates credit booms has essentially focused on their economic determinants. This paper explores the importance of political conditionings and central bank independence and provides some striking findings on this matter. Estimating a fixed effects logit model over a panel of developed and developing countries for the period 1975q1–2016q4, we find that credit booms are less likely when right‐wing parties are in office, especially in developing countries, and when there is political instability. However, they have not proven to depend on the electoral cycle. More independent Central Banks are also found to reduce the probability of credit booms. Moreover, they seem to be more likely to occur and spread within a monetary union.  相似文献   

18.
Apportionment methods are used to round the vote proportions of parties in a proportional representation system to integer numbers of seats in the parliament. Seat biases quantify by how much on average a particular apportionment method favors larger (or smaller) parties. In this paper, we prove a previous conjecture on asymptotic seat biases of stationary divisor methods and the quota method of greatest remainders, as the size of the parliament tends to infinity.  相似文献   

19.
We develop a theoretical framework that allows us to study which bilateral links and coalition structures are going to emerge at equilibrium. We define the notion of coalitional network to represent a network and a coalition structure, where the network specifies the nature of the relationship each individual has with her coalition members and with individuals outside her coalition. To predict the coalitional networks that are going to emerge at equilibrium we propose the concepts of strong stability and of contractual stability. Contractual stability imposes that any change made to the coalitional network needs the consent of both the deviating players and their original coalition partners. Requiring the consent of coalition members under the simple majority or unanimity decision rule may help to reconcile stability and efficiency. Moreover, this new framework can provide insights that one cannot obtain if coalition formation and network formation are tackled separately and independently.  相似文献   

20.
Johnston  Ron  Hartman  Todd  Pattie  Charles 《Quality and Quantity》2019,53(3):1369-1389

There is a growing literature suggesting that the result for each constituency at British general elections can be predicted using ‘citizen forecasts’ obtained through voter surveys. This may be true for the majority of constituencies where the result at previous contests was a substantial majority for one party’s candidates: few ‘safe seats’ change hands. But is it true in the marginal constituencies, where elections are won and lost? Analysis of such ‘citizen forecast’ data for the Labour-Conservative marginal constituencies in 2017 indicates not. Although respondents were aware of the seats’ relative marginality and of general trends in party support during the campaign, they could not separate out those that were eventually lost by each party from those that were won again, even in seats where the elected party won comfortably.

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