Electoral accountability and selection with personalized information aggregation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Li, Anqi; Hu, Lin
• 署名单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University; Australian National University
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2023.04.001
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 296-315
• 关键词: rational inattention; Personalized information aggregation; Electoral accountability and selection

摘要

We study a model of electoral accountability and selection whereby heterogeneous voters aggregate incumbent politician's performance data into personalized signals through paying limited attention. Extreme voters' signals exhibit an own-party bias, which hampers their ability to discern the good and bad performances of the incumbent. While this effect alone would undermine electoral accountability and selection, there is a countervailing effect stemming from partisan disagreement, which makes the centrist voter more likely to be pivotal. In case the latter's unbiased signal is very informative about the incumbent's performance, the combined effect on electoral accountability and selection can actually be a positive one. For this reason, factors carrying a negative connotation in every political discourse-such as increasing mass polarization and shrinking attention span- could have ambiguous accountability and selection effects. Correlating voters' signals, if done appropriately, unambiguously improves electoral accountability and selection and voter welfare. '(c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.