An Agenda-Setting Theory of Electoral Competition

Dragu, Tiberiu; Fan, Xiaochen

doi:10.1086/686310

Cited by 45 publications

(40 citation statements)

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“…According to Proposition 5, electoral competition under increasing returns to e¤ort will be centered on a small set of issues, which are not necessarily the most valued by the voters, but the ones in which candidates have stronger arguments. This type of strategic behavior is in line with the results obtained by several authors in multi-issue electoral competition in which candidates tend to direct their campaign e¤orts towards the issues in which they have some comparative advantage (Amorós and Socorro Puy, 2007;Aragonès et al, 2015;Colomer and Llavador, 2011;Denter, 2016;Dragu and Fan, 2016;Egorov, 2015). In equilibrium, we observe "issue divergence" because the candidates hold strongest arguments on di¤erent issues.…”

Section: Propositionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Our results are related with the recent and growing literature in multi-issue electoral competition. As in our setting, the main observation is that candidates tend to direct e¤orts either towards the issues in which they hold some advantage or towards the issues that are more valued by the voters (Amorós and Socorro Puy, 2007;Aragonès et al, 2015;Colomer and Llavador, 2011;Denter, 2016;Dragu and Fan, 2016;Egorov, 2015). In particular, Denter (2016) follows a contest approach similar to our I-system, but in which the candidates' e¤orts a¤ect their winning chances but also the importance that voters give to each issue.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…In other elections, candidates attempt to drive the political debate to the issue in which they have a comparative advantage. The latter scenario relates to the idea of "issue ownership" (Aragonès et al, 2015;Denter, 2016;Petrocik, 1996;Riker, 1996), "divisive issues" (Dragu and Fan, 2016;Ash et al, 2015) and "issue divergence" (Amorós and Socorro Puy, 2007;Colomer and Llavador, 2011;Egorov, 2015), as in our model under increasing returns to e¤ort.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Conflict and Competition over Multi-Issues

Osório¹

2018

The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics

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Real life disputes, negotiations and competitive situations involve multi-issue considerations in which the …nal outcome depends on the aggregated e¤ort over several dimensions. We consider two allocation systems, the I-system, in which each issue is disputed and award independently, and the A-system, in which all issues are aggregate in a single prize award. In the A-system, we propose a contest success function that aggregates the individuals' multi-issue e¤orts in a single outcome. Among other results, we found that the A-system tends to induce higher total e¤ort than the I-system.The model is also able to reproduce a large set of strategic behaviors. For instance, under decreasing returns to e¤ort, individuals maximize their payo¤s by distributing e¤ort over all issues, while under increasing returns to e¤ort, individuals focus on a single issue. Hybrid equilibria, in which one individual focus in a single issue while the other individual diversi…es e¤ort over all issues, may also emerge when individuals hold di¤erent returns to e¤ort. Strategic behavior is simultaneously in ‡uenced by the weight of each issue on the …nal outcome and by comparative advantages. Throughout the manuscript, we link our results with strategic behavior observed in electoral competition, i.e., "issue ownership", "issue divergence/convergence" and "common value issues". We expect that our …ndings will help researchers and practitioners to better understand the process of endogenous selection of issues in competitive contexts and to provide guidance in the implementation of the optimal allocation mechanism. JEL: C72, D72, D74, D81.

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Section: Propositionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Conflict and Competition over Multi-Issues

Osório¹

2018

The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics

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“…The theory argues that persuasion and conversion are not needed simply because “candidates can structure the election's agenda so that the issues where their positions are popular come to the fore in voters’ minds, then a larger number of voters will support them” (Sides, :410). This theory is very relevant to using the media wisely to win elections (Dragu & Fan, ). As rational actors, candidates employ Riker's “Dominance” principle which stipulates that a candidate ignores an issue if he or she calculates that the opponent has an advantage over this particular issue (Riker et al, ).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Policy Issues and Campaign Strategies: Examining Rationality and the Role of Social Media in a Legislative Election Within a Middle Eastern Context

Yaghi

Antwi‐Boateng

2017

Digest Mid East Studies

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While most studies from western countries emphasize rationality in electoral behavior, the present study proposes that rationality is also a driver of candidates' behavior in a non-Western context. The purpose of the present study is to map campaign content as well as campaign strategies of 214 candidates in the 2015 United Arab Emirates legislative elections. The qualitative analysis showed rational consideration drove the selection of both campaign strategies and public policy positions. Candidates decided to include patriotism and social and economic policy issues in their campaigns to attract votes. In addition, while candidates utilized social meda in their campaigns hoping to maximize their voter outreach, doing so was not necessarily decisive in garnering more votes. Thus, juxtaposed with social meda channels like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SnapChat, and GooglePlus, traditional campaigning strategies remained very potent.Problemas de política p ublica y estrategias de campaña: examinando la racionalidad y el papel que juegan las redes sociales en una elecci on legislativa dentro del contexto del Medio Oriente ResumenMientras que muchos estudios de países occidentales enfatizan la racionalidad en el comportamiento electoral, este estudio propone que la racionalidad es tambi en un motor del comportamiento de los candidatos en un contexto no occidental.El prop osito de este estudio es esquematizar el contenido de las campañas, así como las estrategias de campaña de 214 candidatos en las elecciones legislativas de los Emiratos Arabes Unidos en 2015. El an alisis cualitativo mostr o que la consideraci on racional fue el motor de la selecci on de las estrategias de campaña y de las posturas de política p ublica. Los candidatos decidieron incluir los problemas de patriotismo y política social y econ omica en sus campañas para atraer votos. Adicionalmente, mientras que los candidatos utilizaron las redes sociales en sus campañas esperando llegar a m as votantes, el hacer esto no fue necesariamente decisivo para obtener m as votos. Por ende, yuxtapuestas con canales de redes sociales como Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SnapChat y GooglePlus, las estrategias tradicionales de campaña siguieron siendo muy potentes.

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“…The theoretical literature on a politician's allocation of time across issues is relatively small. Aragones, Castaneira, and Giani (2015), Colomer and Llavador (2011), and Dragu and Fan (2016) all assume fixed policies and analyze politicians' attempts to add salience to issues on which their party has a preexisting advantage. Dragu and Fan (2016) predict that in two-party elections only the minority party has an incentive to increase the salience of issues with high heterogeneity in opinions (sometimes even when the party does not have an expected advantage on that issue), something distinct from our results on incumbents' incentive to focus on divisive issues.…”

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confidence: 99%

Elections and Divisiveness: Theory and Evidence

Ash¹,

Morelli²,

Weelden³

2015

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This article provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of how politicians allocate their time across issues. When voters are uncertain about an incumbent's preferences, there is a pervasive incentive to "posture" by spending too much time on divisive issues (which are more informative about a politician's preferences) at the expense of time spent on common-values issues (which provide greater benefit to voters). Higher transparency over the politicians' choices can exacerbate the distortions. These theoretical results motivate an empirical study of how Members of the US Congress allocate time across issues in their floor speeches. We find that US senators spend more time on divisive issues when they are up for election, consistent with electorally induced posturing. In addition, we find that US house members spend more time on divisive issues in response to higher news transparency.Most citizens want a secure country, a healthy economy, safe neighborhoods, good schools, affordable health care, and good roads, parks, and other infrastructure. These issues do get discussed, of course, but a disproportionate amount of attention goes to issues like abortion, gun control, the Pledge of Allegiance, medical marijuana, and other narrow issues that simply do not motivate the great majority of Americans.-Fiorina, Adams, and Pope (2006, 202) Can't we wait on the things that we're going to yell at each other about and start on the things that we agree on? -Austan Goolsbee, Meet the Press, August 7, 2011 A s the above quotes illustrate, there is a widespread perception that the political process involves excessive amounts of time devoted to narrow and divisive issues. This raises the questions of why politicians spend so much time on these issues and if, as sometimes argued (e.g., Hillygus and Shields 2014), the focus on divisive issues is a response to electoral pressures. We provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of electoral pressures in driving divisive politics.The first contribution of this article is theoretical. We provide a positive theory of incumbent politicians' allocation of time and resources across two policy issues. While commonvalues issues are more important to the voters, voters are unsure of the politician's preferences on divisive issues. The politician has an incentive to overprovide effort on divisive issues, at the expense of common-values issues, to signal that she holds preferences that make her more attractive to the majority of voters. Moreover, this incentive to "posture" is stronger with higher transparency-that is, when voters have more information on the politician's effort choices.The second contribution is empirical. We construct a measure of divisive effort for members of the US Congress using the text of their floor speeches. We then report two new empirical findings. First, we exploit variation in the time to re-election for US senators to demonstrate that senators spend more time on divisive issues when elections are more imminent. Second, we exploit variation in...

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An Agenda-Setting Theory of Electoral Competition

Cited by 45 publications

References 50 publications

Conflict and Competition over Multi-Issues

Conflict and Competition over Multi-Issues

Public Policy Issues and Campaign Strategies: Examining Rationality and the Role of Social Media in a Legislative Election Within a Middle Eastern Context

Elections and Divisiveness: Theory and Evidence

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