Lexicographic Voting: Holding Parties Accountable in the Presence of Downsian Competition

Abstract

This paper combines ideas from models of electoral competition with forward-looking voters and models of electoral competition with backward-looking voters. Two political parties can commit in advance to policy platforms, but not to a maximum level of rent extraction. In the case without uncertainty, the electorate can limit rents to the same extent as in a purely backward-looking model of accountability, and the policy preferred by the voter who represents the median preferences of the electorate is implemented. In the case with uncertainty about the bliss point of the representative voter, the electorate has to accept higher rent seeking by the incumbent politician, but nonetheless retains some control over rent extraction. The policy positions of the two competing parties do not converge as they do in the case without uncertainty. I show in an example that this nonconvergence can increase the welfare of the representative voter.

Competitive elections, incumbency advantage, and accountability

“…The model presented here is in line with the focus on moral hazard problems, speci…cally rent-seeking and e¤ort provision by the politicians, of these early models. Except for Klingelhöfer (2015), the idea of having two parties that alternate in o¢ce has been neglected although this setup seems a natural choice for analyzing, for example, elections in the United States with its two dominating parties. Instead, the focus is on individual politicians who lose o¢ce forever when they lose an election.…”

“…The number of models that combine prospective and retrospective voting motives is small. 6 Klingelhöfer (2015) shows that when accountability and policy determination are analyzed separately and, besides, there is uncertainty over the voters' party preferences, important interdependencies between the two dimensions will be overlooked. Speci…cally, because indi¤erent voters vote for the incumbent party as long as it limits its rent-seeking, the opposition party tries to di¤erentiate itself on the policy dimension to have a chance to win the election.…”