中文摘要
本文将政治视为一种集体学习过程，考察选民的短期记忆对政治结果的影响。我们发现，短期记忆可能导致政党纲领在极化与共识之间的周期交替。在政党共识时期之后，短期记忆意味着选民数据中的变异很小，因此关于世界真实状态的信息有限。这反过来允许政党推进自身利益，从而通过提供不同的政策走向极化。相比之下，极化与更替时期的数据包含足够的变异，使选民能够对正确的政策充满信心，从而迫使两个政党均提供该政策。(JEL D72, D83, E61)
Abstract
This paper investigates the effect of voters’ short-term memory on political outcomes by considering politics as a collective learning process. We find that short-term memory may lead to cycles of polarization and consensus across parties’ platforms. Following periods of party consensus, short-term memory implies that there is little variation in voters’ data and therefore limited information about the true state of the world. This in turn allows parties to further their own interests and hence polarize by offering different policies. In contrast, periods of polarization and turnover involve sufficient variation in the data that allows voters to be confident about what the correct policy is, forcing both parties to offer this policy. (JEL D72, D83, E61)