How Campaign Ads Stimulate Political Interest

Busted by the Ad Police : Journalists ’ Coverage of Political Campaign Ads in the 1992 Presidential Campaign

Political Reputations and Campaign Promises

We analyze conditions under which candidates’ reputations may affect voters’ beliefs over what policy will be implemented by the winning candidate of an election. We develop a model of repeated elections with complete information in which candidates are purely ideological. We analyze an equilibrium in which voters’ strategies involve a credible threat to punish candidates who renege on their ca...

The Iceberg Theory of Campaign Contributions: Political Threats and Interest Group Behavior

We present a model where special interest groups condition contributions on the receiving candidate’s support and also her opponent’s. This allows interest groups to obtain support from contributions as well as from threats of contributing. Out-of-equilibrium contributions help explain the missing money puzzle. Our framework contradicts standard models in predicting that interest groups give to...

Individual Interest and Political Legitimacy

Criticism of contract theory has always played an important role in Hartmut Kliemt’s writings on political philosophy. Notwithstanding his objections to a consent-based justification of the state he has never subscribed to an anarchist position. In Hartmut Kliemt’s view, a minimal state which protects the basic liberties of its citizens has to be considered legitimate. The article begins with a...

Campaign Spending Limits and Political Advertising

T research on political campaigns has focused on the positioning of parties and not on how parties communicate with the electorate. We construct a model where two parties fund both the “creative” and “media” elements of political advertising and examine how campaign budgets affect advertising strategies in the context of a political campaign. Our key finding is that tight campaign limits stimul...