Voter Turnout with Peer Punishment (joint with David K. Levine)

Abstract:

We introduce a model of turnout where social norms, strategically chosen by competing political parties, determine voters' turnout. Social norms must be enforced through costly peer monitoring and punishment. When the cost of enforcement of social norms is low, the larger party is always advantaged. Otherwise, in the spirit of Olson (1965), the smaller party may be advantaged. Our model shares features of the “ethical” voter model and it delivers novel and empirically relevant comparative statics results.