Accountability via Delegation in Dynamic Elections

We study the possibility that elections achieve desirable policy outcomes by bringing the incentives of politicians in line with those of a representative voter, in the context of a general dynamic environment. As our normative benchmark, we take the solution of the dynamic programming problem facing the voter, as if she chose policy directly. We show that when politicians are highly office motivated, there exist equilibria in which all politician types implement an optimal policy rule of the voter. More generally, there exist equilibria in which the politician type corresponding to the representative voter acts as a “faithful delegate” by implementing an optimal rule when elected. We then show that when voters are patient or politicians are highly office motivated, the presence of such a faithful delegate allows the voter to achieve, asymptotically or exactly, optimal policies. Finally, we demonstrate the possibility of multiple equilibria with undesirable normative properties, and we provide relatively narrow conditions that preclude the possibility of such equilibria.