Partisan Traps

About this event

The desire to stifle political competition may lead elected officials to eschew common interest reforms and focus instead on zero-sum partisan conflict. In so doing, incumbents convince voters that such reforms are rarely feasible, so that policy making is primarily about choosing partisan sides. Voters with such beliefs vote based on ideology, which is electorally beneficial for incumbents, who are typically ideologically aligned with their constituents. We capture this logic in an infinite horizon model and characterize the resulting dynamics of politics and policy making. Equilibrium exhibits partisan traps: when voters are pessimistic about common-interest opportunities they elect ideologically-aligned representatives, and these representatives behave in a purely partisan manner, keeping voters pessimistic. Partisan traps often occur in equilibrium even when common-interest reforms are in fact frequently feasible. The model shows how elite and mass polarization are intertwined, with parties engaging in strategically partisan and polarizing behavior which leads to pessimistic beliefs among voters, who then vote in partisan fashion.