Vote splitting,reelection and electoral control: Towards a unified model

This article presents a dynamic game theoretic model of voting in the presence of asymmetric information about a relevant parameter of the economy, the state of the world. Voters may use both vote splitting and reelection as mechanisms of electoral control. In a perfect Bayesian equilibrium, voters will reelect an Executive incumbent if a minimum level of social outcome, n ^*, is attained. The main findings are that voters tend to be more demanding, requiring a higher value for n ^*, if they expect the true state of the world to be favorable, and less demanding if they believe the state of the world is unfavorable. Moreover, vote splitting will be chosen if a favorable state is expected, whereas if an unfavorable state is more likely, voters reduce pressure over the incumbent by choosing a unified government. Received: 9 October 2000/Accepted: 11 February 2002 The author is grateful to Mirta Bugarin, Brian Gaines, Wilfredo Maldonado, Otto Reich, Brian Sala, Marilda Sotomayor, Steven Williams, the participants of the Third Lacea Meeting, the Summer Seminars of the Political Science Department, University of Illinois, the Seminar Program of the Department of Economics of the University of Brasilia and the First World Congress of the Game Theory Society for valuable discussions on previous versions of this article. None of the above is responsible for errors or opinions expressed. The financial support from CNPq/Brazil is gratefully acknowledged.