Abstract
My paper presents two models of 'behavioural political economy.' The first one builds a mathematical model of cognitive dissonance - a psychologically-founded model describing ideologies and mental mind-sets which exhibit the empirically underpinned features of path-dependence and punctuated equilibria. An application here is that people vote because they like emotionally supporting one of the candidates, and would experience dissonance if they had these emotions and at the same time thought that they had no say in the outcome of the elections. The second model uses game theory to show that stability immediately after the establishment of a democratic regime can make or break the fledgling democracy. The policy recommendation is to instigate long-term power sharing agreements in new democracies. Although the two models can be regarded as independent of each other, a great amount of synergy is attainable by incorporating cognitive dissonance in the second one, thereby strengthening its case.
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