Median Voter Research Articles

Lognormal (re)distribution: A macrofounded theory of inequality

We study how political competition over redistribution determines income inequality under one macrofounded premise: the income distribution is approximately log-normal before and after any policy intervention. The unique equilibrium features substantial income inequality and less than maximal redistribution, even if the voters’ median income is very low. Fitting our model to the US economy, we argue that either the efficiency cost of redistribution is higher than estimates in the literature, or else US’s redistributive policies are optimal for an agent richer than the median voter.

Preventative Polarization: Republican Senators’ Positional Adaptation in the Tea Party Era

Republicans in Congress have, by almost any measure, become significantly more conservative over the last 25 years. We propose that the changing pressures they face when seeking reelection helps explain this trend. Rather than moderating towards the general election median voter as they had previously done, Republican senators became more conservative when seeking reelection to avoid the emergence of, or mitigate the threat from, a primary opponent after the Tea Party emerged. We also show that at the height of the Tea Party era—the 111th to 113th congresses—retiring senators moderated their voting behavior, suggesting that their personal preferences were more moderate than their expressed preferences. During the Trump era, we report mixed results, suggesting that the threat posed by primary challengers was not solely ideological, though the new dynamics and behaviors that emerged in the Tea Party era have continued to shape the Republican Party in the Senate.

중위투표자 관점에서의 공공사회복지 지출 분석

This paper analyzes the growth of public social expenditures in Korea from a public choice perspective. Specifically, based on the median voter theory, we conduct an empirical analysis of social insurance expenditures such as national pension, national health insurance, and public social expenditures using time series data from 1993 to 2022. The empirical results support that changes in the budget constraint for lifetime utility maximization of the median voter, including financial assets, remaining life expectancy, and remaining working year, are associated with an increase in public social expenditure. In addition, macroeconomic variables such as the real interest rate, real economic growth, and the tax base per recipient are also found to affect public social expenditure. This paper suggests that as the age of the median voter increases, public social expenditures, including national pensions and national health insurance, are bound to increase both naturally and politically.

Fiscal Incidence of the Property Tax

We use data from Florida spanning a decade (2010–2019) to empirically revisit the topic of fiscal incidence, the difference between benefits received and taxes paid, as it applies to property taxation. We first estimate demand equations in order to calculate the Lindahl tax share, or price the median voter would be willing to pay for public goods. Our measure of fiscal incidence is the difference between the Lindahl tax share and the actual tax share. With the exception of police and fire expenditures, benefits tend to outweigh costs for those with higher incomes, a pattern we attribute to public goods being valued more by high-income residents who pay a modestly progressive property tax. Controlling for income, Hispanic and black residents have higher levels of fiscal incidence. We explore how policy reforms, including equitable property assessment, affects fiscal incidence.

Perceptions and preferences for redistribution

Abstract The relationship between the degree of inequality and the demand for redistribution has been a central question in political science and political economy. The famous median-voter model predicts that higher inequality, reflected in a growing gap between the income of the average and the median voter, should lead to increased demand for redistribution, as policymakers cater to the median voter’s preferences. Yet data from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries show that, despite increases in inequality in those countries, there was no corresponding increase in demand for redistribution. Part of the explanation of this puzzle lies in the realization that it is not only (or even mainly) reality but also perceptions that shape support for policy. This article will explore recent evidence, using large-scale social economics surveys and experiments, that sheds light on beliefs about inequality, social mobility, diversity and immigration, social position, and understanding of how policies work.

Wage bargaining structure and political budget cycles: A policy game approach

Utilizing a panel dataset from OECD countries, this study unveils new evidence suggesting that the centralization of wage bargaining plays a significant role in mitigating Political Budget Cycles. To explain this empirical finding, the paper introduces a political economy model based on a policy game framework, encompassing three key agents: (i) an opportunistic government that decides on the level of budget deficits with the objective of enhancing its reelection prospects, (ii) workers/voters who decide on their sectoral affiliations, and (iii) unions that independently negotiate wages with firms. In this model, the opportunistic government has an incentive to run a budget deficit to favor the median voter, who is affiliated with non-tradable sectors. The mechanism emerges from the impact of debt-financed public spending on relative prices, and consequently, on relative wages between non-tradable and tradable sectors. Wage centralization mitigates the political incentive of opportunistic governments by attenuating the responsiveness of sectoral wages to sectoral prices, thereby pushing down budget deficits towards a socially more optimal level.

Service to demands and corruption tolerance: brazilian voters' perception of “rouba, mas faz” policy

Purpose: The research aimed to verify the influence of meeting public demands on the perception of tolerance of Brazilian voters towards the “rouba, mas faz” policy. Although a social unison of rejection of corruption in politics is perceived, there is a possibility that voters relax this disapproval in the face of the results that managers offer to communities. Methodology: Study of quantitative approach, as for the procedures, a survey was used, with a questionnaire and study of scenarios, of tolerance to “rouba, mas faz”, as a research instrument. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics and presentation in percentages were used for the answers to assertions and scenarios. Results: The results indicate that Brazilians demand honest politicians, although for almost 25% of the population every politician is corrupt, without distinction; for 80% of respondents the main cause of problems in Brazilian public management is political corruption; approximately 70% of voters do not use transparency portals to decide their vote, although 80% claim to research the candidates' history before making their decision. Contributions of the Study: Aspects related to the median voter theory were perceived, since, although Brazilian voters demonstrate intolerance to corruption, the profile with the average characteristics of the population tends to vote for that candidate who promises to meet their needs. In addition, in general terms, 7% of the sample would re-elect a very corrupt politician, as long as he is very productive, while 24% would tolerate corruption, as long as it occurs on a small scale and is accompanied by works and benefits to society, implying that there is, in general terms, to a certain degree, the influence of meeting public demands on voters' tolerance of the “rouba, mas faz” policy in Brazil.

Public Education Investment, Economic Growth and Welfare: A Political Economy Analysis with Preference Heterogeneity

This study examines the politics of public education policy and its impact on economic growth and welfare under intergenerational altruism. The study considers an endogenous growth model with altruistic overlapping generations. Due to its significant role in promoting long-term economic expansion, we consider investment in public education to be an effective tool of productive government intervention. Nonetheless, public educational investment has been the subject of political disputes owing to its inherent intergenerational redistributive implications. Backed by the tendency of democratically elected governments to maintain their political power, the preferences of some particular individuals or group of individuals become more dominant in the political process of determining the level of public investment in education. In particular, governments are more concerned with the preferences of the median voter, or the current generation at large, because they, as electors, have the ability to determine the next government. This reality leads governments to exhibit a bias toward the desires of these people. As a result, such political considerations divert the economy from its optimal path of economic growth and reduce the welfare of future generations. This effect becomes more pronounced when individuals with lower levels of altruism toward their offspring assume a more influential position in the political decision-making process over the allocation of public funds for education. Our theoretical analyses demonstrate the implications for economic growth and welfare resulting from policy decisions made by democratically elected governments with inherent biases, as opposed to decisions made by an unbiased social planner.

The impact of party competition on LGBTI+ rights: Evidence from Spanish autonomous regions (1990–2022)

AbstractPolitical competition accelerates the enactment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, and intersexual rights (LGBTI+) due to the dynamic, rational behavior of mainstream parties across the political aisle to adapt to the sociopolitical environment. We argue that LGBTI+ social movements capitalize on median voter shifts combined with the rising pressure of ideologically close challenger parties to enact legislation. To examine this argument, we employ quantitative event history analysis with a unique dataset with measures for social movement, institutional, political, and sociocultural dimensions across 33 years in Spanish subnational arenas. We find that rising leftist and liberal contenders challenging dominant center‐left and center‐right parties, respectively, widen the opportunity political structure of LGBTI+ organizations. Ultimately, rising political fragmentation in a multiparty, multidimensional party system turns both left and right mainstream parties into allies of LGBTI+ organizations, which propose new legislation, due to political platforms seeking to preserve and enhance their electoral base.Related ArticlesBurnett, Craig M., and Aaron S. King. 2015. “The Personal Politics of Same‐Sex Marriage.” Politics & Policy 43(4): 586–610. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12126.Lewis, Gregory B., Marc A. Rogers, and Kenneth Sherrill. 2011. “Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Voters in the 2000 US Presidential Election.” Politics & Policy 39(5): 655–77. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00315.x.Skipworth, Sue Ann, Andrew Garner, and Bryan J. Dettrey. 2010. “Limitations of the Contact Hypothesis: Heterogeneity in the Contact Effect on Attitudes toward Gay Rights.” Politics & Policy 38(5): 887–906. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2010.00262.x.

Ethnic minority MPs as reputational shields? How Western European political parties respond to public opinion shifts on immigration policy

Abstract In recent decades, representation of ethnic minorities increased significantly across Europe, while concurrently many political parties moved to the right on multiculturalism and immigration, a seeming paradox. We explain it by arguing that often it is the same parties that move to the right and simultaneously increase representation. They use this dual strategy in an attempt to positionally converge to the median voter, where the increased minority representation acts as a reputational shield to prevent allegations of intolerance. Looking at parliaments of eight European countries between 1990 and 2015, we find that parties that shifted to the right in response to a public mood swing to the right are indeed significantly more likely to bring more ethnic minority politicians into parliament. This has important implications for the literature on descriptive representation and party platform change.

Moving toward the Median: Compulsory Voting and Political Polarization

Should turning out to vote in mass elections be voluntary or compulsory? Previous normative arguments for compulsory voting often rely on contested normative claims about the moral duty to vote or about the democratic legitimacy conveyed by high turnout. Our article strengthens the normative case for compulsory voting by arguing that it could improve democracy by reducing polarization, which existing work suggests can lead to democratic backsliding. Drawing on spatial models of electoral competition, we argue that, by reducing more extreme voters’ ability to threaten to abstain due to alienation, the introduction of compulsory voting can push party platforms toward the median voter’s preferences. This directly decreases party polarization, defined as the distance between party platforms. We examine potential normative and empirical objections to this argument and provide scope conditions under which compulsory voting is likely to decrease polarization.

Consolidation nations: Public attitudes, electoral institutions, and fiscal rules in the European Union

We know relatively little about democratic responsiveness on fiscal policy, an area in which both bond markets and European Union (EU) rules constrain European governments' freedom of action. Has their adoption of fiscal responsibility laws (FRLs)—a politically appealing mechanism to restrain deficit spending—in recent decades been the result of their heeding public opinion or ignoring it? Our analysis finds a mixed picture: the strengthening of FRLs generally occurred in the presence of public support for debt reduction, but this public opinion effect is stronger in countries with more majoritarian electoral systems than those with more proportional systems. And although elections induce attentiveness to public attitudes, election proximity did not have a meaningful effect on governments' responsiveness to the public's fiscal preferences. Our explanation for this finding emphasizes the durability of support for debt reduction and political parties' greater sensitivity to median voter positions in more majoritarian electoral systems. These findings deepen our understanding of both austerity politics and democratic performance in Europe, affirming a degree of responsiveness that would be tested in the event of a future debt crisis.

Demography and Inequality: The Effect of Tax Composition

This paper investigates how aging societies lead to worsen distribution of income through tax composition measured by ratio of direct taxes to indirect taxes. The rationale follows: due to the political power of working age population emanating from majority of their share in the population, in a median voter model, they manage to shift the tax burden on aged population in an aging society through increasing direct taxes more than indirect taxes. This results in elevating income inequality in society. To estimate our hypothesis, we apply panel data using time and country fixed effects. Based on sample covering 110 countries from 1990-2020 and applying different inequality measures and robustness check, the empirical evidence considerably supports this hypothesis. The results hold firmly across the OECD and non-OECD countries together with strong and weak democracies.

Obvious manipulations of tops-only voting rules

In a voting problem with a finite set of alternatives to choose from, we study the manipulation of tops-only rules. Since all non-dictatorial (onto) voting rules are manipulable when there are more than two alternatives and all preferences are allowed, we look for rules in which manipulations are not obvious. First, we show that a rule does not have obvious manipulations if and only if when an agent vetoes an alternative it can do so with any preference that does not have such alternative in the top.Second, we focus on two classes of tops-only rules: (i) (generalized) median voter schemes, and (ii) voting by committees. For each class, we identify which rules do not have obvious manipulations on the universal domain of preferences.

Median Voters’ Happiness Cycles in the United States Along the Nation’s Principal Political Fault Line

Median Voters’ Happiness Cycles in the United States Along the Nation’s Principal Political Fault Line

Political behavior and voting for tax incentives

ABSTRACT This study looks at the factors which influence state legislators’ votes on movie production tax incentives. It investigates the relationship between votes cast by state legislators for/against movie production subsidies with respect to election results, political party, political donations, and district geographic and economic characteristics. Votes depend on incentives offered by neighbouring states, political affiliation, margin of election victory, and district unemployment. The number of movies filmed in the district prior to legislative action or political contributions to legislators from movie industry donors are not important vote determinants on this issue. Districts that voted for incentives appear to receive a greater increase in post-legislation film production than those that voted against legislation. Using statewide ballot initiatives to measure voter preferences, the data indicates that legislator votes on movie tax incentives reflect the underlying beliefs of their districts and is consistent with the median voter theorem.

Validity of the Meltzer and Richard hypothesis under captured democracy and policy regime hypotheses

The well-known Meltzer and Richard (1981) hypothesis proposes that median voters are more likely to support redistribution policies that reduce income inequality when the gap between pre-tax income and mean income increases. Despite the academic influence this hypothesis has had, empirical studies demonstrate that the relationships between democracy, redistribution, and inequality are far more complex than Meltzer and Richard assume. Based on previous theoretical research, this study proposes two hypotheses to explain why the equalization effects of democracy may not work: the captured democracy hypothesis and the policy regime hypothesis. Empirical testing with data for 164 countries between 1990 and 2018 suggests the following results. First, the degree of redistribution of democratic countries is much higher than that of nondemocratic countries. However, the variability of income redistribution in democratic countries is higher than that of non-democratic countries. Second, the estimation results do not support the Meltzer and Richard hypothesis for any of three democracy-related indices. This implies that democracy itself is not a sufficient precondition for redistribution. Third, the empirical tests of the two hypotheses on democratic countries support that the equalizing effects of democracy are weaker in societies where political influence depends on socioeconomic position and in societies where neoliberal policies are dominant.

Leaders, factions and the determinants of electoral success

We model the internal game between the leader and the factions of a party, to study the effect of party leadership on the determinants of electoral success. Factions are of interest or of principle. The probability of winning the election is increasing in how close the party is to the median voter, the leader’s charisma, party coherence and the factions’ contributions. The leader offers both types of factions their favourite rewards in exchange for contributions. We show that party coherence and factions’ contributions are not necessarily increasing in the leader’s charisma and ideological proximity to factions. Further, we show that factions of interest constraint the party’s electoral strategy less than factions of principle. In particular, factions of interest always contribute more, are less of an obstacle towards achieving party coherence, and offer the party more freedom in its choice of the ideological location and charisma of the party leader.

Demography and the composition of taxes: a political economy theory

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the impact of population aging on the composition of taxes in an overlapping generations model. Taxes are levied on both income and expenditure, with the median voter being pivotal in the political-economy theoretical framework in question. As in Razin, Sadka, and Swagel (2002. “The Aging Population and the Size of the Welfare State.” Journal of Political Economy 110 (4): 900–918. doi:10.1086/340780), an increased fraction of retirees in the population leads to lower income taxes. Conversely, the results for expenditure taxes are ambiguous. The main proposition is that the composition of taxes–defined as the extent to which taxes are levied on income relative to expenditure–falls unambiguously with the share of retirees increasing as the tax burden is rebalanced toward the retired population.

Accuracy and Preferences for Legal Error

Abstract Legal procedures used to determine liability trade-off type-1 errors (e.g., false convictions) against type-2 errors (e.g., false acquittals). After noting that people’s relative preferences for type-1 errors (compared to type-2 errors) appear to be negatively correlated with technological advancements, we study how the accuracy of evidence collection methods may affect the trade-off between these two errors. Counter-intuitively, we find that under some conditions, greater accuracy may result in a higher probability of type-1 error (or type-2 error) maximizing deterrence. Then, assuming both errors are decreasing in accuracy, we characterize the type-1 error that emerges under electoral pressures (when the median voter’s preferences are implemented): convictions occur more often than is socially optimal but less often than is necessary to maximize deterrence. Moreover, as the harm from crime increases, the median voter becomes less tolerant of type-1 errors as the legal system’s accuracy increases. We also show that, because the median voter is less averse toward type-1 errors than the average citizen, an increase in accuracy may reduce welfare.