让敌人更近：美国与法国选举中的策略性政纲调整
Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during US and French Elections
American Economic Review · 2025 · [{"name": "Rafael Di Tella", "affiliation": []}, {"name": "Randy Kotti", "affiliation": ["Centre for Research in Engineering Surface Technology"]}, {"name": "Caroline Le Pennec", "affiliation": ["HEC Montréal"]}, {"name": "Vincent Pons", "affiliation": ["Center for Economic and Policy Research"]}]
中文摘要
我们利用一个新数据集——2002—2016年美国众议院选举候选人网站资料，以及1958—2022年法国议会和地方选举的候选人纲领文本——研究竞选期间政治话语的变化。我们发现，候选人在意识形态立场与修辞复杂度上，会在第一轮（或初选）与第二轮（或大选）之间向中间立场靠拢。这种趋同反映了候选人根据对手情况所做的策略性调整，与唐斯式竞争理论的预测一致：利用断点回归（RDD），我们表明，相较于对手以微弱劣势未能进入最后一轮的情形，候选人的政纲会更趋同于对手以微弱优势进入最后一轮时的政纲。（JEL D72, D83, D91）
Abstract
We study changes in political discourse during campaigns, using a novel dataset of candidate websites for US House elections, 2002–2016, and manifestos for French parliamentary and local elections, 1958–2022. We find that candidates move to the center in ideology and rhetorical complexity between the first round (or primary) and the second round (or general election). This convergence reflects candidates’ strategic adjustment to their opponents, as predicted by Downsian competition: Using an RDD we show that candidates converge to the platform of opponents who narrowly qualified for the last round as opposed to those who narrowly failed to qualify. (JEL D72, D83, D91)