Abstract
It is well known that the average government loses votes — the so-called cost of ruling. We show that the loss can be explained as a perfectly rational demand for change in a median voter model, once the model is amended to let the two parties be visibly different.
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We wish to thank Douglas Hibbs, Manfred Holler, Peter Nannestad, Arthur Schram and the referee for helpful comments. We are also grateful to participants at the Valencia Meeting of the European Public Choice Society for comments, that could easily have doubled the length of the paper.
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Paldam, M., Skott, P. A rational-voter explanation of the cost of ruling. Public Choice 83, 159–172 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01047690
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01047690