On the inconsistent behavior in voting for incumbents and for term limitation

This paper considers the seemingly inconsistent behavior of individuals who simultaneously vote for incumbents and for limitations on their terms in office. We argue that such behavior may occur even if voters pursue their self-interests in both candidate and term-limitation elections. First, we formulate elections for Congressional candidates as a two-person game, where each candidate maximizes votes by proposing a distribution of benefits to voters. Then we discuss the term limitation at the state level, where voters in each district compare, over time, the average benefits obtained from two alternative series of campaign games: one with a longer tenure associated with no term limit and the other with a shorter tenure created by the introduction of a term limit. In elections of candidates for Congress, the incumbent is successful because he can generate more aggregate benefits for voters. We show, however, that at some critical point of the tenure, his behavior will be less beneficial to his core constituents. In term-limitation elections, those voters tend to support a term limit. In some cases, they represent a majority in the state, and term limits are enacted. Received: February 23, 1999; revised version: January 24, 2000