Inverse Campaigning

Economics

Further details

It can be advantageous for an office motivated party A to spend effort to make it public that a group of voters will lose from party As policy proposal. Such effort is called inverse campaigning. The inverse campaigning equilibria are described for the case where the two parties can simultaneously reveal information publicly to uninformed voters. Inverse campaigning dissipates the parties' rents and causes some ineffciency in expectation. Inverse campaigning also influences policy design. Successful policy proposals hurt small groups of voters who lose much and do not benefit small groups of voters who win much.