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Partisanship as information

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Abstract

Intuitively, we associate different political parties with different types of policy. In contrast, this paper shows that in the absence of differential costs of membership among parties (that is, if party membership ischeap talk), party labels cannot perfectly signal the ideologies of candidates. However, under certain conditions parties can signal candidate types imperfectly. The paper therefore also provides an example of how costless communication can be effective in games of partial conflict.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Economic Research, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000, LE Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Karl Wärneryd

  2. Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics, Box 6501, S-113 83, Stockholm, Sweden

    Karl Wärneryd

Authors
  1. Karl Wärneryd
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Additional information

I presented earlier versions of this paper at the 1992 meeting of the Public Choice Society in New Orleans, the 1992 meeting of the European Public Choice Society in Turin, and the 1992 European meeting of the Econometric Society in Brussels. I thank Jeff Banks, Dennis Coates, Roger Congleton, Roger Myerson, Bernard Steunenberg, and Akira Yokoyama for helpful comments, Joe Harrington for bringing his own related work to my attention, and the Sweden-America Foundation and the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences for financial support.

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Wärneryd, K. Partisanship as information. Public Choice 80, 371–380 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01053227

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