Classical Electoral Competition Under Approval Voting

Abstract

In large societies, collective decisions cannot be taken directly but have to be delegated to professional decision makers. In a democracy, these delegates are typically elected through a competitive mechanism. The simplest expression of such a mechanism is the now standard Downsian model of Politics (Downs 1951) in which a relatively small number of candidates face a relatively large number of voters, the candidates are purely office-motivated and the voters policy-motivated. For the purpose of winning the election, each candidate freely and independently proposes a policy from a fixed and common set of possible policies. Voters are only interested in policies and not in candidates per se. They trust that the elected candidate will implement the policy she is proposing.