The Impact of Reelection Pressures on the Fulfillment of Campaign Promises

Abstract

It is part of the political science folklore that candidates are inclined to keep their campaign promises out of fear of not being reelected. This paper develops a multiperiod signaling model for the purpose of exploring the validity of this folklore. Necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for a candidate to reveal his true policy intentions during the campaign. A crucial condition for campaign speeches to be informative is that voters′ policy preferences respond to the incumbent′s performance. The refining of perfect Bayesian equilibria in the multiperiod signaling context is also explored. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D72, C73.