Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-d5ftd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-24T03:55:45.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Candidate traits in elections: when good news for selection is bad news for accountability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2019

Keith Schnakenberg
Keith Schnakenberg*
Affiliation:
Political Science Department, Washington University St Louis, MO, US
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: keith.schnakenberg@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We analyze a two-election political agency model with moral hazard and adverse selection in which candidates have observable traits such as job qualifications that help voters to imperfectly predict politicians' types. Candidate's traits can help voters select good types of politicians. However, selecting candidates with good traits can reduce accountability because the voter cannot commit to throw out politicians with good traits who produce bad outcomes. This result explains when and why voters may sometimes select candidates who they believe are less likely to be competent.

Keywords

Game theory

Information

Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 206 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ashworth, S (2005) Reputational dynamics and political careers. Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization 21, 441–466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashworth, S and de Mesquita, EB (2014) Is voter competence good for voters?: Information, rationality, and democratic performance. The American Political Science Review 108, 565–587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Avis, E, Ferraz, C and Finan, F (2016) Do government audits reduce corruption? Estimating the impacts of exposing corrupt politicians. Technical report National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berganza, JC (2000) Two roles for elections: disciplining the incumbent and selecting a competent candidate. Public Choice 105, 165–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besley, T (2006) Principled Agents?: The Political Economy of Good Government. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carson, JL, Engstrom, EJ and Roberts, JM (2007) Candidate quality, the personal vote, and the incumbency advantage in congress. American Political Science Review 101, 289–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, JD (1999) Electoral accountability and the control of politicians: selecting good types versus sanctioning poor performance. Cambridge Studies in the Theory of Democracy Cambridge University Press, pp. 55–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, MG and Bonneau, CW (2006) Does quality matter? Challengers in state supreme court elections. American Journal of Political Science 50, 20–33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3694254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirano, S and Snyder, JM (2014) Primary elections and the quality of elected officials. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 9, 473–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kartik, N and Van Weelden, R (2018) Informative cheap talk in elections. The Review of Economic Studies.Google Scholar
Streb, MJ and Frederick, B (2009) Conditions for competition in low-information judicial elections: the case of intermediate appellate court elections. Political Research Quarterly 62, 523–537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar