Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: It is widely agreed that politicians are prone to hyperbole, proposing platforms that no one expects them to fully accomplish. We develop a theory of electoral competition focusing on politicians who differ in terms of both ideological preferences and in their capability to “get things done.” An imperfect ability to implement platforms introduces a novel role for status quo policies. We first show that the traditional left-right orientation of political competition arises only when the status quo is relatively moderate. Otherwise, an extreme status quo becomes the dominant dimension of electoral competition, providing a novel rationale for “populist” campaigns. Our second set of results address when campaign platforms can serve as effective empirical proxies for policies. We show that when there is a shock to voter preferences, the effect on platforms and policies is qualitatively the same, hence platforms are good qualitative proxies for policy implications. But when shocks are to the platform-policy linkage, platforms and policies respond in qualitatively different ways.
DOI: 10.1017/psrm.2025.25
Authors: Zuheir Desai, Scott A. Tyson
Institutions: The Ohio State University, University of Rochester
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W4410412038