Electoral competition in the presence of identity politics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6298745 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Leyla D Karakas (0000-0002-8824-8056, Syracuse University, corresponding author), Devashish Mitra (0000-0003-3842-3386, Syracuse University) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 169-197 |
| Publication date | 2021-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Theoretical Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0951-6298 • E-ISSN: 1460-3667 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629820984847 |
| OpenAlex | W3119422682 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 39 |
This paper studies the effects of cultural identity on electoral and policy outcomes when voters are “behavioral.” Building on the evidence that voters assess political or economic events through the lens of their partisan identifications, we analyze an election between two office-motivated candidates in which voters over-reward or under-punish the candidate that shares their cultural identity. Focusing on issues with cultural as well as distributional implications for voters such as immigration and the cultural divide based on nativism as the source of identity politics, we find that the candidates’ equilibrium policies are always preferred by the electorally dominant cultural group to the policy that would be optimal if policies only had distributional consequences. We also show that candidates do not necessarily target their own cultural bases in equilibrium. Furthermore, stronger identity politics increases policy polarization. Our findings contribute to the debates on the decoupling of voting behavior from economic interests, and the rise of immigration, trade protectionism, or engagement with global governing institutions as electoral issues that can shift historical voting patterns
Economics · Identity (music · Identity politics · Immigration · Market economy · Polarization (electrochemistry · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Protectionism · Psychological nativism · Voting · Voting behavior · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Media Influence and Politics
White Backlash
Immigration and Voting for the Far Right
Group Identity and Social Preferences
Positive reciprocity and intentions in trust games
Demand and Supply of Populism
Mixed Equilibrium in a Downsian Model with a Favored Candidate
Prospect Theory
Economics and Identity
Who Is Against Immigration? A Cross-Country Investigation of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants
Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition
Valence Politics and Equilibrium in Spatial Election Models
Identity voting
Electoral Control with Behavioral Voters
The Determinants of Success of Special Interests in Redistributive Politics
Bias Will Find a Way
The Political Conditioning of Economic Perceptions
Beyond the Running Tally
Equilibrium in the Spatial ‘Valence’ Model of Politics
Social Identity, Political Speech, and Electoral Competition
Immigration, Latinos, and White Partisan Politics
A Model of Candidate Location When One Candidate Has a Valence Advantage
Crashing the Party? Elites, Outsiders, and Elections
Expressive Partisanship
Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States
Tactical Extremism
Partisanship and Economic Behavior
Partisan Affect and Elite Polarization
| Citations per year | 0.83 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |