Journal Articles

Partisan optimism and political bargaining

---

Partisan voters are optimistic about electoral outcomes: their estimates of the probability of
electoral success for their party are substantially higher than the average among the electorate.
This has large potential implications for political bargaining. Optimistic electoral expectations
make costly bargaining delay look more favourable, which may induce partisans to punish their
party for agreeing to a compromise rather than waiting, for example by not turning out to vote.
Party decision makers should take this into account when bargaining. We set up and analyse a
simple game theoretic model to explore the implications of partisan optimism for political
bargaining. We show that increased optimism among a partisan group leads to a stronger
bargaining position for their party, but may hurt its electoral prospects. Another main finding is
that even high levels of partisan optimism do not in themselves cause inefficient bargaining
delay.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

Journal of Theoretical Politics

Call Number

-

Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications., 2017

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0951-6298

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

Volume 29, Issue 2, April 2017; pp. 191–213

Subject(s)

Elections
bargaining
formal modelling
partisan optimism

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment