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THE REVELATION OF INFORMATION THROUGH THE ELECTORAL PROCESS: AN EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS *
Author(s) -
Harrington Joseph E.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
economics and politics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1468-0343
pISSN - 0954-1985
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0343.1992.tb00087.x
Subject(s) - exploratory analysis , incentive , competition (biology) , private information retrieval , revelation , process (computing) , policy analysis , competition policy , political science , public economics , economics , public relations , microeconomics , business , public administration , computer science , computer security , data science , art , ecology , monopoly , literature , biology , operating system
This paper investigates the incentives for candidates to make informative campaign speeches concerning their policy intentions. Electoral competition is modeled as a game of communication in which candidates’policy preferences are private information and they compete by making pre‐electoral policy announcements. An equilibrium is shown to exist in which candidates reveal their true policy intentions. We find that campaign messages are more likely to be informative, the less powerful is the elected office, the more attractive are candidates’opportunities outside of office, and the more uniform are candidates’prior beliefs as to the median voter's preferred policy.