Contagion of populist extremism

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kishishita, Daiki; Yamagishi, Atsushi
• 署名单位: Tokyo University of Science; Princeton University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104324
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Political agency; Yardstick competition; populism; Observational learning; signaling

摘要

To explore the propagation of undesirable policies in a form of populist extremism, we construct a social learning model featuring agency problems. Politicians in different countries sequentially implement a policy. Voters learn the incumbent politician's type and the desirable policy by observing foreign policies on top of the domestic policy. We show that populist extremism is contagious across countries through the dynamic interaction between the changing public opinion and implemented policies. This structure yields interesting long-run dynamics. First, a single moderate policy could be always enough to stop the domino effect. Second, the persistence of the domino effect depends on the correlation of the desirable policy across countries. In particular, while extremism eventually ends under the perfect correlation, it may become impossible to escape from extremism under the imperfect correlation. These results illuminate a new negative aspect of decentralized policymaking. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.