Many political commentators diagnose an increasing polarization of the U.S. electorate into two opposing camps. However, in standard spatial voting models, changes in the political preference distribution are irrelevant as long as the position of the median voter does not change. We show that...

Consider a setting in which several groups of individuals with common interests ("clubs") compete with each other for recognition by other individuals. Depending on the context, recognition may be expressed by these other individuals joining a club, or choosing one club to admire. Clubs compete...

We introduce a general framework in which politicians choose a (possibly infinite) sequence of binary policies. The two competing candidates are exogenously committed to particular actions on a subset of these issues, while they can choose any policy for the remaining issues to maximize their...

We introduce a framework of electoral competition in which voters have general preferences over candidates' characteristics and policies. Candidates' immutable characteristics (such as gender, race or previously committed policy positions) are exogenously differentiated, while candidates can...

How does electoral accountability affect the effectiveness of terrorism prevention in a democ- racy? We analyze the connection between electoral accountability and policy effectiveness in the context of terrorism prevention. We develop a formal model of an interaction between a government, a...

We develop a formal model in which the government provides public goods in different policy fields for its citizens. We start from the basic premise that two office-motivated candidates have differential capabilities in different policy fields, and compete by proposing how to allocate government...

How does ideological polarization on non-economic matters influence the size of government? We analyze this question using a differentiated candidates framework: Two office-motivated candidates differ in their (fixed) ideological position and their production function for public goods, and...

One of the most widely discussed phenomena in American politics today is the perceived increasing partisan divide that splits the U.S. electorate. A central contested question is whether this diagnosis is actually true, and if so, what is the underlying cause. We develop a model that relates the...

Gerrymandering undermines representative democracy by creating many uncompetitive legislative districts, and generating the very real possibility that a party that wins a clear majority of the popular vote does not win a majority of districts. We present a new approach to the determination of...

How should we evaluate the welfare implications of improvements to safety technologies in the presence of offsetting behavior? We model this problem as a symmetric game in which each player's payoff depends on his own action and the average action of the other players, and analyze under which...