Seminário NOVAFRICA: Os incentivos para (não) debater em eleições com pouca informação

Na quarta-feira, dia 4 de outubro, pelas 15h30 (hora de Lisboa), na sala B 132 o Centro NOVAFRICA recebe Katherine Casey da Universidade de Stanford para apresentar o seu trabalho sobre “The Incentives to (Not) Debate in Low Information Races”.

Autora:
Katherine Casey

Resumo:
While candidate debates are designed to facilitate informed vote choices, they are more prevalent where they are less likely to be impactful: in wealthier countries and higher profile races, where citizens are already better informed. Why? We propose a framework where debates generate a noisy signal of candidate quality and participating in one imposes accountability costs on elected officials. We use the framework to discuss a series of experiments in Parliamentary elections in Sierra Leone. Under private elicitation, where voters do not learn who agrees to participate, most races include one (but often only one) candidate willing to debate. These candidates are unable to convince their rivals to join them, implying that few debates occur in the status quo. Guaranteeing a public platform, whereby debates go forward if even a single candidate participates, reveals to voters who is willing to debate and dramatically increases debate prevalence to between 70 and 100 percent of races. Debate participation also rises when the quality of moderation increases, making the signal sent less noisy. Voters demonstrate a healthy willingness to pay to watch debates and commercial businesses are willing to screen them. Thus the paucity of debates in low information races may not reflect lack of voter interest so much as a credible way to impose nonparticipation costs on politicians with weak incentives to participate.

Saiba mais sobre este seminário here.