I present a model of fund-raising in repeated elections where funds are raised to deter the entry of strong challengers, and to increase the probability of winning through campaign spending. The equilibrium relationship between war chests and incumbent strength is non-monotonic, because...

I explore the incentives under alternative electoral institutions for national politicians to efficiently provide local public goods. Using a career-concerns model which incorporates voter ideological heterogeneity and thus allows comparison of electoral-college and majoritarian elections at the...

"I eat my peas with honey. I've done it all my life. It makes 'em taste quite funny, but it keeps them on the knife." – an old Bostonian jump roping rhyme.

Success and failure of democracy are interpreted as different equilibria of a dynamic political game with cost of changing leadership and incomplete information about politicians' virtue. Unitary democracy can be frustrated when voters do not replace corrupt leaders, because any new leader would...

The 2004 election has been interpreted as a resounding victory for conservative values. Was it in fact a mandate? The present analysis examines recent electoral outcomes and the 2004 election with particular reference to economic and political fundamentals. It compares the results of the 2004...

We model political parties as adaptive decision-makers who compete in a sequence of elections. The key assumptions are that <italic>winners satisfice</italic> (the winning party in period <italic>t</italic> keeps its platform in <italic>t</italic> + 1) while <italic>losers search</italic>. Under fairly mild assumptions about losers' search rules, we show that...

In recent decades psychologists have shown that the standard model of individual choice is often violated as choices are influenced by the decision context. We propose that voting behavior may be similarly influenced and we introduce a theory of <italic>context-dependent voting</italic>. Context-dependence...

Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? asserts that the Republican Party has forged a new "dominant political coalition" by attracting working-class white voters on the basis of "class animus" and "cultural wedge issues like guns and abortion." My analysis confirms that white voters...

This paper develops a theoretical model of informative campaigning, both positive and negative. We argue that some information on a candidate can be transmitted more efficiently by his opponents and that negative campaigning, on average, facilitates a more informed choice by the electorate. In...

We present a general model of legislative bargaining in which the status quo is an arbitrary point in a multidimensional policy space. In contrast to other bargaining models, the status quo is not assumed to be bad for all legislators, and delay may be Pareto efficient. We prove existence of...