Political social-learning: short-term memory and cycles of polarisation

Levy, Gilat ORCID: 0009-0006-7641-1668 and Razin, Ronny ORCID: 0009-0009-5169-0180 (2024) Political social-learning: short-term memory and cycles of polarisation. American Economic Review. ISSN 0002-8282 (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of voters' short-term memory on political outcomes by considering politics as a collective learning process. We find that short-term memory may lead to cycles of polarisation and consensus across parties' platforms. Following periods of party consensus, short-term memory implies that there is little variation in voters' data and therefore limited information about the true state of the world. This in turn allows parties to further their own interests and hence polarise by offering different policies. In contrast, periods of polarisation and turnover involve sufficient variation in the data that allows voters to be confident about what the correct policy is, forcing both parties to offer this policy.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024
Divisions:	Economics
Subjects:	J Political Science H Social Sciences
Date Deposited:	12 Nov 2024 16:42
Last Modified:	17 Dec 2024 11:48
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/126039

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