Electoral competition with ideologically biased voters
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629816650761 |
| Author | Marco Magnani |
| Published date | 01 July 2017 |
| Date | 01 July 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Electoral competition with
ideologically biased voters
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2017, Vol. 29(3) 415–439
©The Author(s) 2016
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DOI:10.1177/0951629816650761
journals.sagepub.com/home/jtp
Marco Magnani
Department of Economics, Universitá degli Studi di Parma, Italy
Abstract
This paper studies pork barrel spending in a model where two symmetric parties compete for
an electorate consisting of groups which have different ideological preferences. In equilibrium,
party electoral promises decrease with voter ideological biases, and a “swing voter” outcome
emerges. In this context, a problem of exclusion from party transfer plans arises which depends
on ideology distribution. Groups with extreme ideological preferences are excluded from these
plans, and also within moderate groups a share of voters receives a nil transfer from the parties.
This exclusion problem is generally reduced if a transformation of the electorate occurs which
decreases the polarization of the distribution of ideology.
JEL Classification: D72, D63, H2.
Keywords
Exclusion from party transfer plans; ideology; pork barrel spending
1. Introduction
In electoral campaigns, parties competing for parliamentary seats debate a wide set of
issues, which range from the role of women in society to agricultural subsidies for honey.
In this variegated landscape, a distinction is possible between ideological issues and tac-
tical issues. This distinction is essentially based on how free the parties are to take a
specific position on these issues.
The position of a party on ideological issues is essentially fixed,and is deter mined by
its history and background. These issues in fact characterize the broad political view of a
party, which is not easily changed from one election to the next. They may be economic,
as in the case of the programmatic redistribution defined in Dixit and Londregan (1996),
or non-economic, as in the case of abortion and gun control.
Corresponding author:
Marco Magnani, Department of Economics, Universitá degli Studi di Parma, via J.F. Kennedy, 6, Parma, PR
43100, Italy.
Email: marco.magnani@unipr.it
416 Journal of Theoretical Politics 29(3)
Parties, however, are free to choose any position on tactical issues, without being
constrained by previous stands taken in the past or by their owncultural identity. Tactical
issues are mostly economic, and specially concern preferential transfers to some voters.
These transfers, often called pork barrel spending, may take several forms, ranging from
subsidies or taxes for particular districts to the location of military bases.
Both ideological and tactical issues have prominent roles inelectoral competition. On
the one hand, in fact, tactical issues represent the main tool to increase the vote share of a
party. Since the positions on pork barrel spending are not fixed and can be easily varied,
these preferential transfers are mainly used to poach votes from competitors. On the other
hand, ideological issues remain an important element in voter preferences. An ideologi-
cally biased voter benefits from the sole fact of voting for the party which promotes her
preferred ideological issues, and is less responsive to pork barrel spending.1
The present paper studies the interaction between ideological and tactical issues and
focuses on its effects on the allocation in the electorate of party preferential transfers.
The analysis extends the deterministic voting model by Myerson (1993), and consid-
ers the case of an electorate formed by groups of voters who have different ideological
preferences, where two symmetric parties compete in an election by simultaneously
announcing a transfer plan for the public budget.2In the campaign, each voter is offered
a transfer by the parties, and electoral competition is a sort of vote-buying activity.
In this framework, if an ideologicallybiased voter casts her votes for the party whose
ideological issues are the closest to hers (i.e. the affiliated party) she obtains, by this sole
fact, a given benefit. The size of this benefit measures the intensity of the ideological
bias, which is nil in the case of swing voters. Voting for the party whose ideological
issues are the furthest to hers (i.e. the opposition party) however does not provide utility
or dis-utility either.
In the elections, voters compare the utility which results from summing the benefits
provided by the ideological bias and by the offer of their affiliated party, to the utility
deriving from the offer of the opposition party. Then they sincerely vote for the party
which offers the highest level of utility.
The equilibrium of this redistribution game is characterized here, and the effects on
party transfer plans of changes in the distribution of ideology in the electorate are studied.
In the Appendix a generalization to the case of asymmetric distribution of ideology is also
provided.
The focus of the analysis is on the outcomes of electoral competition in terms of
the distribution of the public budget across groups. In particular, I study the expected
transfers to voters with different ideology bias, and the degree of exclusion from party
transfer plans, which is the circumstance where some voters receive a nil transfer from
a party. The exclusion from pork barrel spending characterizes the platforms of both
parties. This fact is the most important consequence of introducing ideology into electoral
competition.
In equilibrium, party transfer plans conform to the results of the “swing voter” theory.
Each voter receives an expected transfer,both from the affiliated and from the opposition
party, which decreases as the size of her ideological bias increases. Moreover, in each
group some members receive a nil transfer from the parties, whose number increases as
the ideological bias of the group gets larger. Lastly, on the most extreme fringes of the
electorate, there are groups which are not targeted by pork barrel spending.
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