A political agency model of coattail voting

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zudenkova, Galina
• 署名单位: Universitat Rovira i Virgili; Universitat Rovira i Virgili; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.07.003
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 1652-1660
• 关键词: Coattail voting; Presidential coattail effect; Reverse coattail effect; Simultaneous elections; Political agency; Retrospective voting

摘要

This paper provides a theoretical model for the coattail effect, where a popular candidate for one branch of government attracts votes to candidates from the same political party for other branches of government I assume a political agency framework with moral hazard in order to analyze the coattail effect in simultaneous presidential and congressional elections. I show that coattail voting is the outcome of the optimal reelection scheme adopted by a representative voter to motivate politicians' efforts in a retrospective voting environment. I assume that an office-motivated politician (executive or member of congress) prefers her counterpart to be affiliated with the same political party. This correlation of incentives leads the voter to adopt a joint performance evaluation rule, which is conditioned on the politicians belonging to the same party or to different parties. Two-sided coattail effects then arise. On the one hand, an executive's success props up, while failure drags down, her partisan ally in the congressional election, which implies a presidential coattail effect. On the other hand, the executive's reelection itself is affected by a congress member's performance, which results in a reverse coattail effect. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.