Richard Van Weelden Publications

A proposer requires a veto player’s approval to change a status quo. Proposer is uncertain about Vetoer’s preferences. We show that Vetoer is typically given a non-singleton menu, or delegation set, of options to pick from. The optimal set balances the extent of compromise with the risk of a veto. We identify conditions for certain delegation sets to emerge, including “full delegation”: Vetoer can choose any action between the status quo and Proposer’s ideal action. By contrast to expertise-based delegation, Proposer gives less discretion to Vetoer when their preferences are more (likely to be) aligned.

We study dynamic models of electoral accountability. Politicians’ policy preferences are their private information, so officeholders act to influence the electorate’s beliefs—ie, to build reputation—and improve their re-election prospects. The resulting behavior may be socially desirable (good reputation effects) or undesirable (bad reputation effects). When newly-elected officeholders face stronger reputation pressures than their established counterparts, good reputation effects give rise to incumbency disadvantage while bad reputation effects induce incumbency advantage, all else equal. We relate these results to empirical patterns on incumbency effects across democracies.

This paper concerns electoral accountability and incumbency effects. In democracies, voters delegate policy decisions to elected politicians. Such delegation poses challenges, however, as there is no formal contract governing what decisions an officeholder takes (there is moral hazard), and officeholders may have their own policy preferences that only they know (there is adverse selection). The primary instrument that voters can use to control officeholders—to hold them accountable for their actions—is the decision of re-election. We study how re-election concerns shape incumbents’ behavior and the consequences for voters’ retention decisions.

Why do office-motivated politicians sometimes espouse views that are non-congruent with their electorate’s? Can non-congruent statements convey any information about what a politician will do if elected, and if so, why would voters elect a politician who makes such statements? Furthermore, can electoral campaigns also directly affect an elected official’s behaviour? We develop a model of credible “cheap talk”—costless and non-binding communication—in elections. The foundation is an endogenous voter preference for a politician who is known to be non-congruent over one whose congruence is sufficiently uncertain. This preference arises because uncertainty about an elected official’s policy preferences generates policymaking distortions due to reputation/career concerns. We show that cheap talk can alter the electorate’s beliefs about a politician’s policy preferences and thereby affect the elected official’s behaviour. Informative cheap talk can increase or decrease voter welfare, with a greater scope for welfare benefits when reputation concerns are more important.

We introduce a Downsian model in which policy‐relevant information is revealed to the elected politician after the election. The electorate benefits from giving the elected politician discretion to adapt policies to his information. But limits on discretion are desirable when politicians do not share the electorate's policy preferences. Optimal political representation generally consists of a mixture of the delegate (no discretion) and trustee (full discretion) models. Ambiguous electoral platforms are essential for achieving beneficial representation. Nevertheless, electoral competition does not ensure optimal representation: The winning candidate's platform is generally overly ambiguous. While our theory rationalizes a positive correlation between ambiguity and electoral success, it shows that the relationship need not be causal.