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Political Accountability, Electoral Control, and Media Bias

Author

Listed:
  • Takanori Adachi

    (School of Economics, Nagoya University)

  • Yoichi Hizen

    (Graduate School of Economics and Business Administration, Hokkaido Univeristy)

Abstract
Are anti-establishment mass media really useful in preventing politicians from behaving dishonestly? This paper proposes a voting model for analyzing how differences in the direction of media bias affect politicians' behavior. In particular, the probability of corruption by an incumbent is higher (than that in the case of no media bias) if and only if the mass media have some degree of "anti-incumbent" bias (i.e., information favorable to the incumbent is converted into unfavorable news about him or her with a positive probability), provided that the incumbent is less likely to be opportunistic than a challenger. This result holds irrespective of the degree of "pro-incumbent" bias (i.e., information unfavorable to the incumbent is converted into impressive news about him or her with a positive probability). We also show that media bias never increases voter welfare. Our results thus suggest that society should make an effort to eliminate media bias per se rather than promote antagonistic media.

Suggested Citation

  • Takanori Adachi & Yoichi Hizen, 2012. "Political Accountability, Electoral Control, and Media Bias," KIER Working Papers 811, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:kyo:wpaper:811
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    File URL: http://www.kier.kyoto-u.ac.jp/DP/DP811.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    Cited by:

    1. Takanori Adachi & Yoichi Hizen, 2014. "Political Accountability, Electoral Control and Media Bias," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 316-343, September.
    2. Stephane Wolton, 2019. "Are Biased Media Bad for Democracy?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(3), pages 548-562, July.
    3. Miura, Shintaro, 2019. "Manipulated news model: Electoral competition and mass media," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 306-338.
    4. Anqi Li & Lin Hu, 2020. "Electoral Accountability and Selection with Personalized Information Aggregation," Papers 2009.03761, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political Accountability; Retrospective Voting; Media Bias; Voter Welfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government

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