TY  - JOUR
AU  - Grossman,Gene
AU  - Helpman,Elhanan
TI  - Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4877
PY  - 1994
Y2  - October 1994
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4877
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4877.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Gene M. Grossman
International Economics Section
Department of Economics
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Tel: 609/258-4823
Fax: 609/258-1374
E-Mail: grossman@princeton.edu

Elhanan Helpman
Department of Economics
Harvard University
1875 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-495-4690
Fax: 617-495-7730
E-Mail: ehelpman@harvard.edu
AB  - We study the competition between two political parties for seats in a parliament.  The parliament will set two types of policies: ideological and non-ideological.  The parties have fixed positions on the ideological issues, but choose their non-ideological platforms to attract voters and campaign contributions.  In this context, we ask: How do the equilibrium contributions from special interest groups influence the platforms of the parties?  We show that each party is induced to behave as if it were maximizing a weighted sum of the aggregate welfares of informed voters and members of special interest groups.  The party that is expected to win a majority of seats caters more to the special interests.
ER  -