Incumbent competition and pandering

• Main Author: Go, Anne Marie L.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2021
• Subjects: Legislation; Political Science
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/9511
• Institution: De La Salle University

Two politicians choose an action to maximize popularity with only partial information on the popular choice, the choice preferred by the public, and the socially optimal choice, the choice that maximizes public welfare. The model explores the decisions of politicians and the policies formed under a relative popularity framework. Although choosing the popular choice increases the popularity of politicians, pandering costs can be incurred when the socially optimal choice is revealed to be different from the popular choice. The paper looks at the types of policies passed for salient issues and non-salient issues given different levels of clarity on public opinion. I find that for salient issues, a divided public is better than a united but ill-informed one. For nonsalient issues, policies are always passed when public opinion is clear, while politicians diverge strategically under low policy payoffs when public opinion is unclear.