Hierarchies and promotions in political institutions: accountability and selection

Montagnes, B. Pablo, Wolton, Stephane ORCID: 0000-0003-1405-650X and Jiang, Junyan (2025) Hierarchies and promotions in political institutions: accountability and selection. Games, 16 (4). p. 34. ISSN 2073-4336

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Abstract

Hierarchies are common in political settings. From judges to elected politicians, as well as from activists to bureaucrats, political agents compete for promotion to higher positions. This paper studies political tournaments and their impact on two aspects of political performance: accountability and selection. While larger tournaments discourage effort, they improve selection. We also discuss the optimal design of tournaments as a function of the principal’s objectives and the features of the environment. We find that tournaments of size two (such as two-candidate elections) are generally suboptimal. Our analysis also highlights that increased desirability of promotion always increases effort but can reduce the optimal tournament size under certain conditions. We also present a range of other comparative statics.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author
Divisions:	Government
Subjects:	J Political Science
Date Deposited:	14 Jul 2025 07:24
Last Modified:	14 Jul 2025 07:27
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/128797

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