A Reform Dilemma in polarized democracies

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gersbach, Hans; Tejada, Oriol
• 署名单位: Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; ETH Zurich
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.01.007
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 148-158
• 关键词: Elections; DEMOCRACY; Costs of reform; political polarization

摘要

We study the feasibility and efficiency of policy reforms in democracies. We develop a simple election model where (i) reforms are costly for voters and politicians and these costs increase with the extent of policy change, and (ii) politicians differ in their ability to carry out reforms efficiently. We identify a so-called Reform Dilemma, which manifests itself in two variants. From a static perspective, low-reform-ability politicians are elected when political parties are polarized, who then impose high costs on citizens for each reform step. This property of elections arises as low reform ability is a substitute for policy commitment. From a dynamic perspective, incumbents may choose socially undesirable policies to align the social need for reform with their own reform ability and are thus re-elected regardless of their reform ability.