Sustainability of Political Collusion and Existence of an Alternative Candidate

Abstract

Political collusion between an interest group and a politician is observed in many situations. We explore how the existence of an alternative candidate affects the sustainability of political collusion. Then, we show that results we obtain without the existence of an alternative candidate sometimes do not hold. First, when policy preference of a politician becomes closer to an interest group, collusion may become less sustainable. Second, an increase in the difference of valence between candidates may make collusion difficult. Last, as one extension, we examine the effect of the irreversibility of policy change and show that it makes collusion less sustainable.