TY  - JOUR
AU  - Robinson,James A.
AU  - Torvik,Ragnar
TI  - The Real Swing Voter's Curse
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14799
PY  - 2009
Y2  - March 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14799
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14799.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James A. Robinson
Harvard University
Department of Government
N309, 1737 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/496-2839
Fax: 617/495-0438
E-Mail: jrobinson@gov.harvard.edu

Ragnar Torvik
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Department of Economics
N-7491 Trondheim
Norway
E-Mail: ragnar.torvik@svt.ntnu.no
AB  - A key idea in political economy is that policy is often tailored to voters who are not ideologically attached - swing voters. We show, however, that in political environments where political parties can use repression and violence to exclude voters from elections, they may optimally target the swing voters. This is because they anticipate that if they had to compete for the support of these voters, they would end up giving them a lot of policy favors. Hence in weakly institutionalized political environments swing voters are cursed rather than blessed. We illustrate the analysis with a discussion of recent political events in Zimbabwe.
ER  -