ESSAYS ON THE SINGLE-MINDEDNESS THEORY

In: http://hdl.handle.net/10280/303

Abstract

The scope of this work is analysing how economic policies chosen by governments are influenced by the power of social groups. The core idea is taken from the single-mindedness theory, which states that preferences of groups and their ability to focus on the consumption of goods enable them to obtain the most favourable policies. This approach exploits the advantages of probabilistic voting theory, ability to manage the multidiemnsionality and possibility to study precisely how politicians tailor their policies to groups' features. Unlike classic probabilistic voting models, my theory assumes that the density function which captures the distribution of political preferences depends on consumption of goods and preferences of individuals. The higher the consumption of goods, the higher the density, the higher the political power. This mechanism is better explained by considering the role played by "swing voters". Since they are pivotal to changing the equilibrium, candidates must favour them because they realise that even a small change in policy could force them to vote for the other candidate, Thus, the lower the loyalty of voters for parties, the higher the benefit they obtain. As a consequence, these voters are better off and represent the winners of the political process.