Tactical Extremism

Eguia, Jon X.; GIOVANNONI, FRANCESCO

doi:10.1017/s0003055418000758

Cited by 21 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Our framework offers an explanation for why parties may instrumentally choose relatively extreme policies. In Eguia and Giovannoni (2019), a party that is sufficiently disadvantaged today may give up on a mainstream policy, and instead invest in an extreme policy; it does so not to increase its office-motivated payoffs today, but instead to gamble on a shock to voters' preferences in a subsequent election. Our explanation emphasizes that the instrumental adoption of extreme policies in the face of a likely election defeat arises not only via dynamic office-holding incentives, but also via static office-holding incentives that emphasize the value of a strong minority position.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Race to the Base

Bernhardt¹,

Buisseret

Hidir

2020

American Economic Review

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We study multi-district legislative elections between two office-seeking parties when one party has an initial valence advantage that may shift and even reverse during the campaign; and, each party cares not only about winning a majority, but also about its share of seats. When the initial imbalance favoring one party is small, each party targets the median voter. For moderate imbalances, the advantaged party maintains the centre-ground, but the disadvantaged party retreats to target its core supporters; and for large imbalances, the advantaged party advances toward its opponent, raiding its moderate supporters in pursuit of an outsized majority. (JEL D72)

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confidence: 99%

The Race to the Base

Bernhardt¹,

Buisseret

Hidir

2020

American Economic Review

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“…A recent and growing literature is focused on understanding the causes and effects of political extremism and populism. Among these studies, the most closely related are those by Eguia and Giovannoni (2019), who explain extremism as a tactical investment by a party into its future ability to offer an alternative to mainstream policies, and Diermeier and Li (2019), who explain polarization as an outcome of the voters’ tendencies to respond more to policy deviations by their own party. A model of populism that also considers voters’ reference-dependent preferences is provided by Panunzi et al (2020), who study an election between an incumbent and a riskier opponent and obtain in equilibrium that the risky opponent can put together a coalition of rich and economically disadvantaged voters by proposing lower taxes.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral competition in the presence of identity politics

Karakas

Mitra

2021

Journal of Theoretical Politics

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This paper studies the effects of cultural identity on electoral and policy outcomes when voters are “behavioral.” Building on the evidence that voters assess political or economic events through the lens of their partisan identifications, we analyze an election between two office-motivated candidates in which voters over-reward or under-punish the candidate that shares their cultural identity. Focusing on issues with cultural as well as distributional implications for voters such as immigration and the cultural divide based on nativism as the source of identity politics, we find that the candidates’ equilibrium policies are always preferred by the electorally dominant cultural group to the policy that would be optimal if policies only had distributional consequences. We also show that candidates do not necessarily target their own cultural bases in equilibrium. Furthermore, stronger identity politics increases policy polarization. Our findings contribute to the debates on the decoupling of voting behavior from economic interests, and the rise of immigration, trade protectionism, or engagement with global governing institutions as electoral issues that can shift historical voting patterns.

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“…In Acemoglu, Egorov, and Sonin (2013), policy makers choose extreme policies in order to signal that they are not captured by elites. Eguia and Giovannoni (2019) argue that electorally disadvantaged parties may invest in extremist platforms. Rodrik (2018) empirically associates populism with new issues and distributive conflicts brought about by globalization.…”

Section: Primariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crashing the Party? Elites, Outsiders, and Elections

Buisseret

Weelden

2019

American J Political Sci

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We consider an election between two parties that nominate candidates for office. The parties are polarized along a traditional cleavage, but they are also internally divided along a second issue dimension. We introduce a threat of entry from Outsider candidates, who have the prominence and resources to bypass party elites. We consider when voters will turn to Outsiders, and identify the conditions under which Outsiders will enter the election through an established party's nomination process, as opposed to circumventing established parties via a third‐party challenge. We further explore when the elites will fail to respond to the threat of Outsider candidates. Our framework highlights how established parties will be especially vulnerable to Outsider primary entry in periods of intense ideological polarization between the parties, and that this vulnerability is especially heightened for the majority party.

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Tactical Extremism

Cited by 21 publications

References 19 publications

The Race to the Base

The Race to the Base

Electoral competition in the presence of identity politics

Crashing the Party? Elites, Outsiders, and Elections

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