Peter Coughlin provides the most comprehensive and integrated analysis of probabilistic voting models to date. Probabilistic voting theory is the mathematical prediction of candidate behaviour in, or in anticipation of, elections in which candidates are unsure of voters' preferences. The theory asks first whether optimal candidate strategies can be determined given uncertainty about voter preferences, and if so, what exactly those strategies are given various circumstances. It allows the theorist to predict what public policies will be supported and what laws passed by elected officials when in office and what positions will be taken by them when running in elections. One of the leading contributors to this rapidly developing literature, at the leading edge of public choice theory, Coughlin both reviews the existing literature and presents results that unify and extend developments in the theory.

No abstract

This paper considers how government size responds to a change in the influence of interest groups. First, an election model is developed that has an equilibrium and in which interest groups have unequal influence. The authors then show that an increase in a group's influence per se does not cause government size to increase but does cause its size to increase when the government (1) cannot change tax shares or (2) provides a good benefiting one (untaxed) group, whose sole interest is in maximizing its consumption of the good. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the normative implications.

No abstract

No abstract