Making executive politics mutually productive and fair

Abstract

Winner-take-all elections for executive offices create high-stakes electoral conflict that distorts policy-making and constitution-making behavior. When the stakes are high, so long as it increases the chances of victory, office-seekers seek to shift perceived benefits toward and burdens away from potentially pivotal participants. This can entail the strategic allocation of spoils, the strategic selection of public policies that mobilize one's base or divide the opposition, the strategic shifting of benefits into the present and costs into the future, and the strategic deception of the uninformed. This paper proposes a ''turn-taking institution,'' an electoral system in which the whole term is only awarded to a sufficiently inclusive supermajority coalition; if no coalition qualifies, the plurality winner and the runnerup take alternating one-year turns for the length of the term. This institution lowers the stakes of electoral conflict by roughly an order of magnitude, and fosters the formation, enforcement and adaptation of mutually productive policy-making and constitution-making behaviors. Critically, these results hold up even when voters and policy-makers are impatient, and when only short-run commitments are possible.

An institutional remedy for ethnic patronage politics

“…Kenya). We have begun this analysis elsewhere (Durant, 2011;Durant and Weintraub, 2013) and believe that we can build a more in-depth discussion based upon what we have set out here.…”

“…Second, our analysis is focused on mass -not elite -behavioral changes. Elsewhere (Durant, 2011;Durant and Weintraub, 2013) we consider how the turn-taking institution would affect the ability of elites to form, enforce, and adapt agreements about policy and policy-making institutions. Expectation-symmetry in the turn-taking phase is conducive to cooperation, especially when elites are impatient, when incumbency advantages are substantial, and when horizons of commitment are limited.…”

Altruism, Righteousness, and Myopia

“…37. For our efforts so far, see Durant 2011, Durant and Weintraub 2011a, and Durant and Weintraub 2011b …”