TY - JOUR
T1 - Ideologues or pragmatists?
AU - De Mesquita, Ethan Bueno
AU - Friedenberg, Amanda
PY - 2011/10
Y1 - 2011/10
N2 - We study a model of electoral control where the politician is a policy expert, but the voter is not. First, we focus on the case of an "ideologue", namely a politician who always wants the same policy implemented regardless of the state. We show that the voter's lack of policy expertise comes at no cost to him, but may come at an electoral cost to the politician. Next, we turn to the case of a "pragmatist", namely a politician whose preferences are state contingent. We show that the voter's lack of policy expertise does come at a cost to him. As a consequence, the voter may fare better with an ideologue than with a pragmatist. This can occur even if the pragmatist's preferences are arbitrarily close to and perfectly correlated with the voter's.
AB - We study a model of electoral control where the politician is a policy expert, but the voter is not. First, we focus on the case of an "ideologue", namely a politician who always wants the same policy implemented regardless of the state. We show that the voter's lack of policy expertise comes at no cost to him, but may come at an electoral cost to the politician. Next, we turn to the case of a "pragmatist", namely a politician whose preferences are state contingent. We show that the voter's lack of policy expertise does come at a cost to him. As a consequence, the voter may fare better with an ideologue than with a pragmatist. This can occur even if the pragmatist's preferences are arbitrarily close to and perfectly correlated with the voter's.
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U2 - 10.1111/j.1542-4774.2011.01032.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1542-4774.2011.01032.x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:80053196622
SN - 1542-4766
VL - 9
SP - 931
EP - 951
JO - Journal of the European Economic Association
JF - Journal of the European Economic Association
IS - 5
ER -