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Economics of Governance

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31.08.2023 | Original Paper

Discipline by turnout

verfasst von: Dong-Hee Joe

Erschienen in: Economics of Governance | Ausgabe 4/2023

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Abstract

This paper explores the possibility that voter turnout induces subsequent performance from the elected official, in a two-period signaling-game model of political agency. An election is held in each period to delegate a policy decision to a politician whose policy preferences are private information. A representative voter decides, in each election, whether to vote for a politician or abstain, and voting incurs a cost which is private information. With ex-ante identical politicians, turning out in the first election is statically not optimal for the voter. However, she may still do so to signal her willingness—low cost—to punish a wrong policy in the following election.

Vorheriger Artikel Do young politicians make a difference? Evidence from local public expenditure in South Korea

Nächster Artikel Ethnically asymmetric political representation and the provision of public goods: theory and evidence from Ethiopia

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Although turnout has a disciplinary effect in Besley and Burgess (2002), it is exogenous there, contrary to the current paper where the endogeneity of turnout is the key ingredient. While Aldashev (2015) looks at correlation between policy announcements during campaign and the subsequent turnout with purely expressive motives, there is no effect of turnout per se (nor is there asymmetric information, which is the source of the agency problem).

The choice of a pure adverse selection is for simplicity. The results hold with adverse selection and moral hazard, as long as the voter observes the policy implemented or has access to an informative signal of it.

These predictions are well supported by empirical evidence: for instance, from local executives in the U.S. (Besley and Case 1995; Besley 2004; Aruoba et al 2019), Brazil (Ferraz and Finan 2011) and India (Besley and Burgess 2002); legislators in Argentina (Dal Bó and Rossi 2011) and Brazil (Ferraz and Finan 2009); and the U.S. state court judges in Kansas (Lim 2013).

Aruoba et al (2019) show further that the disciplinary effect is quantitatively larger than a selection effect—congruent incumbents are more likely to be reelected, resulting in a larger share of congruent incumbents serving the second term than the first term. Somewhat contrary to this, Gagliarducci and Nannicini (2013) find among Italian local executives that the positive effect of higher wages is driven rather by selection (of more competent politicians) than incentives (from the higher benefits of reelection).

The basic structure about politicians follows Besley (2007)[section 3.3].

Since B and R are designated to reflect policy preferences, assuming that the unelected politician’s payoff is as in Eq. (1) without the ego rents E may be more natural. Nevertheless, this does not qualitatively alter the subsequent analysis, and the simpler assumption of a zero payoff is maintained.

Notations are kept minimal for brevity. More precise notations are used in the Appendix. A pure strategy of the voter assigns a vote choice—vote for one of the two politicians or abstain—in each election following every possible history. Similarly, a pure strategy of a politician assigns a policy in each period she is elected following every possible history.

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Titel: Discipline by turnout
verfasst von: Dong-Hee Joe
Publikationsdatum: 31.08.2023
Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Erschienen in: Economics of Governance / Ausgabe 4/2023
Print ISSN: 1435-6104
Elektronische ISSN: 1435-8131
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-023-00301-9

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