Suchergebnisse

Minimal winning coalitions have appeared as a key prediction or as an essential assumption of virtually all formal models of coalition formation, vote buying, and logrolling. Notwithstanding this research, we provide a model showing that supermajority coalitions may be cheaper than minimal winning coalitions. Specifically, if vote buyers move sequentially, and if the losing vote buyer is always granted a last chance to attack the winner's coalition, then minimal winning coalitions will generally not be cheapest, and equilibrium coalitions will generally not be minimal winning. We provide results relating equilibrium coalition size with preferences of the legislators and vote buyers, and we show that minimal winning coalitions should occur in only rare cases. We discuss these results in light of empirical work on coalition size and suggest other possible avenues for testing our model. (American Political Science Review / FUB)

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the degree to which incumbents scare off challengers with previous officeholder experience. The estimates indicate a surprisingly small amount of scare-off, at least in cases where the previous election was nearly tied. As Lee and others have shown (and as we confirm for our samples) the estimated party incumbency advantage in these same cases is quite large—in fact, it is about as large as the average incumbency advantage for all races found using other approaches. Drawing from previous estimates of the electoral value of officeholder experience, we thus calculate that scare-off in these cases accounts for only about 5–7 percent of the party incumbency advantage. We show that these patterns are similar in elections for US House seats, statewide offices and US senate seats, and state legislative seats.

We estimate the impact of press coverage on citizen knowledge, politicians' actions, and policy. We find that voters living in areas where, for exogenous reasons, the press covers their U.S. House representative less are less likely to recall their representative's name and less able to describe and rate him or her. Congressmen who are less covered by the local press work less for their constituencies: they are less likely to stand witness before congressional hearings, to serve on constituency-oriented committees (perhaps), and to vote against the party line. Finally, federal spending is lower in areas with exogenously lower press coverage of congressmen. Adapted from the source document.