Essays on Partisanship, Polarization, and Political Decision-Making

In my dissertation I use game theory to study the incentives of political actors. The analysis is divided into three chapters which examine, in turn, the decisions of candidates, legislators, and voters.;First, I analyze a model of repeated elections in which a representative voter selects among candidates with known policy preferences in each period. In addition to having preferences over policy, the elected candidate would like to use their position to secure rents at the voter's expense. I restrict attention to equilibria consistent with retrospective voting in which the candidates' strategies are stationary. I consider the policies different candidates would implement and the amount of rent-seeking they would engage in if elected, and, consequently, which candidates will be elected by the voter. I show that, when utilities are concave over policy choices, the voter will not want to delegate to candidates who share their policy-preferences. The voter is better off delegating to candidates with preferences on opposite sides of their own, and using these candidates to discipline each other. The resulting policy divergence decreases the amount of rent-seeking in equilibrium.;The second chapter, co-authored with Justin Fox, examines the welfare effects of partisanship in a model of checks and balances. In our model, the executive makes a policy proposal and an overseer then decides whether or not to veto the proposal. A partisan overseer is one who, in addition to seeking to promote her own reputation, cares how her decision will impact the executive's reputation. We show that partisanship can improve the efficacy of an oversight regime, as it creates distortions which can offset the distortions caused by the overseer's desire to enhance her own reputation. This provides a new rationale for divided government, as partisan considerations are often necessary to prevent the overseer from rubber-stamping all proposals.;Finally, I consider a model of pre-vote deliberation with sequential communication. While most models of pre-vote deliberation assume voters send messages simultaneously, in practice, they are almost always sent sequentially. I show that sequential communication makes it even more difficult to induce truthful communication: for any voting rule truthful communication can only be achieved if all voters will agree on the preferred outcome in any state.