An agenda-setting model of electoral competition

This paper presents a model of electoral competition focusing on the formation of the public agenda. An incumbent government and a challenger party in opposition compete in elections by choosing the issues that will key out their campaigns. Giving salience to an issue implies proposing an innovative...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:SERIEs : journal of the Spanish Economic Association 2012-03, Vol.3 (1/2), p.73-93
Main Authors: Colomer, Josep M, Llavador, Humberto
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
agenda
Agreement
Competition
Economic models
Economic Policy
Economic theory
Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods
Economics
Economics and Finance
Elections
issues
Microeconomics
Neue politische Ökonomie
Original Article
political competition
Political parties
Politisches Ziel
Präsidentschaftswahl
Public Finance
Public policy
salience
Studies
USA
Voters
Wahlkampf
Öffentliche Meinung
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper presents a model of electoral competition focusing on the formation of the public agenda. An incumbent government and a challenger party in opposition compete in elections by choosing the issues that will key out their campaigns. Giving salience to an issue implies proposing an innovative policy proposal, alternative to the status-quo. Parties trade off the issues with high salience in voters' concerns and those with broad agreement on some alternative policy proposal. Each party expects a higher probability of victory if the issue it chooses becomes salient in the voters' decision. But remarkably, the issues which are considered the most important ones by a majority of voters may not be given salience during the electoral campaign. An incumbent government may survive in spite of its bad policy performance if there is no sufficiently broad agreement on a policy alternative.We illustrate the analytical potential of the model with the case of the United States presidential election in 2004.
ISSN:1869-4195
1869-4187
1869-4195
DOI:10.1007/s13209-011-0056-5