Dynamic Elections and the Limits of Accountability
We provide conditions under which policy outcomes are responsive to preferences of voters in a dynamic model of elections with a discrete state space and general policies and preferences. We begin with weak conditions guaranteeing that in each state, at least one type of politician can choose a policy that leads to reelection a minimal prerequisite for electoral accountability. Strengthening our assumptions, we show that politicians whose preferences coincide with those of a fixed representative voter solve that voter's dynamic programming problem, and we show that there exist equilibria such that all politician types solve this problem so that electoral accountability leads to responsive policy outcomes. Finally, under our strongest conditions, we establish an asymptotic responsiveness result to the effect that all equilibria approximately solve the representative dynamic programming problem as citizens become patient. When the conditions for these results are not met, examples demonstrate novel dynamic political failures.