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Séminaire d’économie de Bordeaux

Sarah Parlane 

University College Dublin

A rationale for political disengagement

Johan A. Dornschneider-Elkink, Sarah Parlane, Thomas Sattler

Abstract: This paper provides a theoretical understanding of political engagement which rests upon a rational choice theory. Citizens can participate in a referendum over two options which are horizontally differentiated on a policy space. The citizens are risk averse and imperfectly informed about the exact political implications associated with each option presented to them. Each has an ideal point on the policy space capturing their intrinsic political preference. During a campaign, a signal that is non-negatively correlated with each option’s true political implications becomes freely available. We capture political disengagement as a voluntary decision to ignore the information that will be released during the campaign. By opposition, engaged citizens follow the campaign and learn the signal. We show that disengagement on behalf of all citizens arises in equilibrium if the outcome of the referendum does not depend on the signal. When the outcome of the referendum depends on the signal that is revealed, two equilibria can arise. When the uncertainty surrounding both options is relatively similar, all citizens engage. When one option is relatively more uncertain than the other some individuals, characterized by extreme political ideologies, decide to disengage as they accurately anticipate that, should their preferred option be the outcome of the vote, its political implications will not be as extreme as they would like them to be. We provide some empirical support for our results using survey data on the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum.

>> pour assister au séminaire via Zoom, contacter julie.vissaguet@u-bordeaux.fr