American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Political Social Learning: Short-Term Memory and Cycles of Polarization
American Economic Review
vol. 115,
no. 2, February 2025
(pp. 635–59)
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.Citation
Levy, Gilat, and Ronny Razin. 2025. "Political Social Learning: Short-Term Memory and Cycles of Polarization." American Economic Review 115 (2): 635–59. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20220226Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
- E61 Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination