Citizen Candidate Research Articles

Citizen candidates in the lab: Rules, costs, and positions

We report the findings from a study that explores candidate participation in a context where citizens can become candidates under both plurality and run-off voting systems. The study also considers the influence of entry costs and different platforms of potential candidates. While our findings align with the expected outcomes of the citizen-candidate model, there is a notable over-participation by candidates from less favorable electoral positions. These entry patterns adjusted well to the QRE. This research adds to the existing body of knowledge about what motivates candidates to enter races under different voting systems and analyzes the behavior of candidates in extreme positions.

The determinants of political selection: a citizen-candidate model with valence signaling and incumbency advantage

AbstractWe expand the theory of politician quality in electoral democracies with citizen candidates by supposing that performance while in office sends a signal to the voters about the politician’s valence. Individuals live two periods and decide to become candidates when young, trading off against type-specific private wages. The valence signal increases the reelection chances of high valence incumbents (screening mechanism of reelection), and thus their expected gain from running for office (self-selection mechanism). Since self-selection improves the average quality of challengers, voters become more demanding when evaluating the incumbent’s performance. This complementarity between the self-selection and the screening mechanisms may lead to multiple equilibria. We show that more difficult and/or less variable political jobs increase the politicians’ quality. Conversely, societies with more wage inequality have lower quality polities. We also show that incumbency advantage blurs the screening mechanism by giving incumbents an upper-hand in electoral competition and may wipe out the positive effect of the screening mechanism on the quality of the polity.

Navigating obstacles: Perspectives of US pharmacy residency directors on non‐US candidates for PGY‐1 residencies: A survey‐based research

AbstractIntroductionPharmacy education and postgraduate training in the United States (US) are esteemed, drawing international students to American Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE)‐accredited schools and pursuing residency training after graduation. Despite this, limited literature addresses the obstacles international students face in pursuing American Society of Health‐System Pharmacists (ASHP) accredited residency programs.ObjectivesTo summarize potential eligibility barriers for international graduates of ACPE programs during the residency application process from residency program directors' (RPDs) perspectives.MethodsA 16‐question electronic survey was developed and distributed to all RPDs of US‐based ASHP‐accredited postgraduate year‐1 (PGY‐1) programs in July 2021. Questions addressed whether non‐US citizens were eligible to apply, barriers to recruiting non‐US citizen candidates, and barriers to offer visa sponsorships. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data.ResultsA total of 196 programs responded to the survey (response rate, 13.5%). Eighty‐nine (45.4%) programs reported that candidates with F‐1/optional practical training (OPT) status were eligible to apply for their program, while 86 programs (43.9%) reported candidates were not eligible. Barriers for recruiting candidates with F‐1/OPT status included lack of resources to support application process (n = 42), citizenship requirements (n = 41), institution policy (n = 33), department preference (n = 12), and unfamiliar with procedures in selecting these candidates (n = 18). Over 70% (n = 146) would not offer visa sponsorship for pharmacy resident positions. Barriers to offering sponsorship were lack of support resources (n = 62), cost (n = 60), time preparing applications (n = 46), citizenship requirements (n = 45), and department preference (n = 23).ConclusionThis study investigates the obstacles encountered by non‐US citizens in the residency application process, as perceived by program directors. The primary obstacle in recruiting candidates with F‐1/OPT status and providing visa sponsorships revolves around the inadequate support and resources available for the application process.

Political Competition with Endogenous Party Formation and Citizen Activists

This paper studies the effects of endogenous party formation on political platforms. It develops a model in which parties allow like-minded citizens to, first, share the cost of running in a public election and, second, coordinate on a policy platform. The paper characterizes the set of political equilibria with two competing parties and with one uncontested party. In two-party equilibria, the distance between both platforms is always positive but limited, in contrast to the median voter model and the citizen candidate model. In one-party equilibria, the median voter can be worse off than in all equilibria with two competing parties. (JEL D71, D72)

Do high engagement Instagram images influence presidential candidate evaluation? The moderating effect of familiarity

PurposeThis paper aims to examine how exposure to a presidential candidate's high engagement Instagram images influences a citizen's candidate evaluations.Design/methodology/approachData were collected via Amazon MTurk. A 3 × 2 experimental design was employed to test the persuasive effect of exposure of the “most liked” and “most commented on” images of the top four 2016 US presidential primary candidates on a US citizen's candidate evaluation.FindingsResults reveal that highly engaging Instagram images of unfamiliar presidential candidates positively influenced candidate evaluations. However, the same was not true for more well-known presidential candidates.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was not conducted during a live campaign and only examined four of the top 2016 presidential primary candidates.Practical implicationsThe research includes implications for marketers seeking to increase engagement and reach in Instagram marketing campaigns. This study shows that even brief exposure to a highly engaged post involving an unfamiliar person/product on social media can significantly alter evaluations of that person or product.Originality/valueTo the authors' knowledge, no experimental designs have addressed how Instagram posts influence users' political attitudes and behaviors within the political marketing and communications literature.

Local politicians’ preferences in public procurement: ideological or strategic reasoning?

ABSTRACT Governments do not exclusively buy from the cheapest bidder and increasingly use public procurement as a policy instrument to achieve wider environmental, innovative and social objectives. Past studies have shown the process of government contracting to be connected to political factors. This paper studies the extent to which politicians’ preferences for price and non-price criteria in the contract awarding stage are associated with politicians’ ideological reasoning (the Citizen Candidate model), and strategic reasoning (the Downsian approach). Politicians’ preferences are analysed through a discrete choice experiment. We find that politicians’ preferences for non-price criteria are strongly connected to ideological reasoning and to a limited extent to strategic reasoning. We also observe that, regardless of their political ideology and financial situation of the municipality, politicians are willing to look beyond price, and consider environmental, innovative and social criteria when awarding contracts.

Political Competition with Endogenous Party Formation and Citizen Activists

The paper studies the eect of endogenous party formation on platform choice in plurality elections. Policy-motivated citizens can form parties in order to share an exogenous cost of running in the general election and nominate a presidential candidate in primary elections. Thus, parties allow like-minded citizens to coordinate their political behavior in order to improve the policy outcome. The paper concentrates on political equilibria with two active parties which exist for all levels of membership cost and electoral uncertainty. In contrast to the citizen candidate model (Besley and Coate 1997) and the classical median voter model (Downs 1957), there can neither be full convergence nor extreme polarization of party platforms in equilibrium. Crucially, allowing for endogenous party formation eliminates the extreme multiplicity of equilibria in the citizen candidate model. This insight is provided most clearly in the benchmark case of full electoral certainty, where a unique political equilibrium with positive platform distance exists.

Tying the politicians’ hands: The optimal limits to representative democracy

AbstractThe citizen candidate models of democracy assume that politicians have their own preferences that are not fully revealed at the time of elections. We study the optimal delegation problem which arises between the median voter (the writer of the constitution) and the (future) incumbent politician under the assumption that not only the state of the world but also the politician's type (preferred policy) are the policy‐maker's private information. We show that it is optimal to tie the hands of the politician by imposing both a policy floor and a policy cap and delegating him/her the policy choice only in between the cap and the floor. The delegation interval is shown to be the smaller the greater is the uncertainty about the politician's type. These results are also applicable to settings outside the specific problem that our model addresses.

Paying Politicians: Not Too Little, Not Too Much

How does pay affect the quality of politicians? This paper addresses the question by considering a three‐period citizen candidate model where potential candidates vary in skills and in public service motivation. First, potential candidates observe the level of pay in politics and simultaneously decide whether or not to run for office. Second, an election takes place and only one candidate is elected. Finally, the successful candidate provides a public good, while the others work in the market sector. In a benchmark model where potential candidates differ only in skills, the quality of the elected politician is shown to increase with pay. If public service motivation is also considered, then an inverted U‐shaped relationship is found.

Does “being chosen to lead” induce non-selfish behavior? Experimental evidence on reciprocity

We present experimental evidence that policies chosen by leaders depend on whether they were elected or appointed, and that this difference stems from how they are chosen per se, rather than on other explanations given in empirical studies. We find that elected leaders are significantly more likely to choose a non-selfish policy than leaders who are appointed. Elected leaders who act non-selfishly will favor the voter over the losing candidate, while appointed leaders show no tendency to favor the voter over the losing candidate. Our results provide support for the view that non-selfish behavior of leaders reflects a reciprocity motive; candidates do not simply implement their own preferences once in office, as suggested by the basic citizen–candidate model.

Candidate Entry and Political Polarization: An Experimental Study

We report the results of a laboratory experiment based on a citizen–candidate model with private information about ideal points. Inefficient political polarization is observed in all treatments; that is, citizens with extreme ideal points enter as candidates more often than moderate citizens. Second, less entry occurs, with even greater polarization, when voters have directional information about candidates’ ideal points, using ideological party labels. Nonetheless, this directional information is welfare enhancing because the inefficiency from greater polarization is outweighed by lower entry expenses and better voter information. Third, entry rates are decreasing in group size and the entry cost. These findings are all implied by properties of the unique symmetric Bayesian equilibrium cutpoint pair of the entry game. Quantitatively, we observe too little (too much) entry when the theoretical entry rates are high (low). This general pattern of observed biases in entry rates is implied by logit quantal response equilibrium.

LOBBYING AND ELECTIONS

ABSTRACTI analyse the interaction between post‐election lobbying and the voting decisions of forward‐looking voters. The existing literature has shown that in models with citizen candidates from a dispersed distribution of preferences, lobbying has no influence on implemented policy. In my model with ideological parties, lobbying is shown to have an effect on policy. In terms of welfare, I show that the median voter and the majority of voters can be better off with lobbying.

The Politics of Public Housing Reform: Local Government Stock Transfer in England

ABSTRACTDrawing on theories of political competition, we explore the extent to which local public housing reform reflects the ideology of local ruling parties and local political preferences. Based on the citizen candidate and median voter perspectives, we hypothesize that left-wing party rule and pro-state preferences are associated with higher levels of government-owned housing. We test these hypotheses by analyzing the levels of housing stock held by English local governments during the period 2001–14. Our findings suggest that pro-state preferences matter more than left-wing party rule for the overall extent of public housing provision. By contrast, right-wing party rule is associated with the likelihood that a local government’s housing stock will be transferred out of the public sector, but pro-market preferences do not influence this decision. The implications of the findings are discussed in the conclusion.

The Design of Reforms with Time-Inconsistent Voters

Widespread agreement that a political reform is necessary is no guarantee that it is actually undertaken in a timely manner. There is often a delay before action is taken and reform packages that would be most efficient to implement all at once are often done only gradually. We propose a theoretical model explaining this behavior and show that when voters have present-biased, time-inconsistent preferences, gradualism can arise in equilibrium and be welfare-enhancing. This is because without the possibility for gradualism, time-inconsistent voters would delay implementing the reform even more. Using a citizen candidate model, we allow the agenda setter, who decides which reform schedule to put to vote, to be endogenously determined. We show that voters who are aware of their own time inconsistency use the election of the agenda setter as a commitment device and appoint an agent who is more patient than the median voter in order to avoid full procrastination and to achieve efficiency-maximizing gradualism.

Design of reforms with time‐inconsistent voters

Widespread agreement that a political reform is necessary is no guarantee that it is actually undertaken in a timely manner. There is often a delay before action is taken and reform packages that would be most efficient to implement all at once are often done only gradually. We propose a theoretical model explaining this behavior and show that when voters have present‐biased, time‐inconsistent preferences, gradualism can arise in equilibrium and be welfare‐enhancing. This is because without the possibility for gradualism, time‐inconsistent voters would delay implementing the reform even more. Using a citizen candidate model, we allow the agenda setter, who decides which reform schedule to put to vote, to be endogenously determined. We show that voters who are aware of their own time inconsistency can use the election of the agenda setter as a commitment device and appoint an agent who is more patient than the median voter in order to avoid full procrastination and to achieve efficiency‐maximizing gradualism.

The determinants and electoral consequences of asymmetric preferences

This paper studies two widely used models of political competition – citizen-candidate and probabilistic voting – to investigate the impact that asymmetries in single-peaked preferences have on two-party electoral competition. In a two-candidate equilibrium of the citizen–candidate model, asymmetries determine which candidate proposes a more moderate platform. In the probabilistic voting model, they induce both parties to move their platforms in the direction of the asymmetry, and affect the probabilities of victory of the contenders, sometimes in unexpected ways: under a restriction on party preferences, more overprovision avoidance increases the probability of victory of the party proposing a larger public sector and vice versa. The final part of the analysis shows that consumers' risk aversion, prudence and a decreasingly effective government induce overprovision avoidance asymmetries, whereas consumers' risk neutrality, a constant-effective government and a property we call decreasing satiation induce shortfall avoidance asymmetries.

Gender and public choice in rural India: can female leaders really influence local governance?

With established quotas that formalise the presence of women in local governance in rural India, it remains unclear how women are shaping public decision-making in practice. This paper, based on a survey carried out in four female-led and two male-led local governance institutions in Himachal Pradesh, empirically analyses decision-making based on competing Public Choice models. Results indicate that Public Choice theories fail to accurately predict decision-making because they do not account for embedded norms of gendered labour division. Female leaders can be constrained in their policy-making by the gender congruence of certain political tasks. This paper suggests that in the case of female-congruent political domains, such as health and education, a Citizen–Candidate model might best predict female-led decision-making processes while in the case of male congruence, such as irrigation and land development, a Downsian model might prevail.

Why so Few Women in Politics? Evidence from India

In this paper we analyze women as political candidates in a representative democracy. Using 50 years of assembly elections data at the constituency level from the Indian states, we show that women are more likely to contest elections in those constituencies where gender ratio of the electors is less in favor of women. For example, women are more likely to contest elections in backward states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where the gender ratio of electors is in favor of men than in socially developed states like Kerala where the gender ratio of electors is more in favor of women. We present a “citizen candidates” model of representative democracy and show that our empirical results are consistent with the theoretical predictions of this model. Our results challenge existing policy of random reservation of seats for women.

Political preferences and public sector outsourcing

Given the intensive and ideologically charged debate over the use of private contractors for publicly funded services, it is somewhat surprising that many social scientists have preferred to explain government outsourcing by the pursuit of economic efficiency. Starting out from different theories, we investigate political explanations of government outsourcing using a Swedish data set in which outsourcing varies between municipalities and over time, as well as between services. Our identification strategy focuses on two services with similar contracting problems and local market conditions: preschools and primary schools. We study a period in which Swedish municipalities had full discretion in the provision of preschools, while their influence on the private provision of primary education was limited by a national voucher system. The comparison of preschools with primary schools in a difference-in-differences model suggests that the political color of the ruling majority influences outsourcing, which is consistent with the Citizen Candidate model of representative democracy.

Strategic Candidacy via Endogenous Commitment

We study political competition with policy-motivated citizen candidates and demonstrate two-candidate competition where one of them has no chance of being elected. If an elected candidate has multiple policies she can credibly implement, then she can choose her implementing policy contingent on who are the rivals in the election. Given that the winning candidate takes such a strategy, the opponent wishes to run even with no chance of winning the election since policy compromises can be induced from the winner. We furthermore demonstrate that such a two-candidate equilibrium with strategic candidacy is supported by repeated election even if candidates do not have multiple ideal policies.