Essays in strategic communication in politics

This thesis has three chapters which examine the impact of strategic communication at three key steps of the political process: before a politician's election (Chapter 1), during her/his time in office (Chapter 2), and before her/his attempt to win reelection (Chapter 3).;In Chapter 1 joint with Carlo Prato, we examine strategic communication during electoral campaigns. We present a theory of elections in which successful communication of political messages during campaigns requires efforts by politicians and a representative voter. We show that the voter's interest in politics affects the effectiveness of the electoral process as screening and disciplining device. The electoral process performs poorly and the voter's level of political activity is low when the voter cares little about politics-this is the curse of the apathetic voter-, or cares a lot about politics-this is the curse of the engaged voter. Consequently, an engaged voter is not always an active voter and fostering political engagement (e.g., by lowering the cost of political information or facilitating policy changes) might have negative consequences on voter's attention to politics and welfare.;In Chapter 2, I study how Special Interest Groups (SIGs) can provide strategically information to policymakers to influence political decision. Following a long tradition in the descriptive literature on SIGs, I distinguish between two classes of special interest group (SIG) spending: inside lobbying, which is intended to influence the content of a bill; and outside lobbying, which is intended to influence the likelihood a bill is enacted into law. I juxtapose both lobbying activities within a single model. I show that a policymaker bases his policy decisions on his assessment of the probability of SIGs engaging in outside lobbying. Importantly, the policymaker's expectation about the likelihood of such activity is not adequately measured by inside lobbying expenditures because of the strategic interactions between the two lobbying activities. Consequently, the correlation between inside lobbying expenditures and influence is weak. This chapter suggests that empirical studies of SIG influence which exclusively consider inside lobbying expenditures---as nearly all existing tests do---are likely to produce results that are both inconsistent and spurious.;In Chapter 3, I consider how media affect voters' ability to provide the right electoral incentives to politicians in office so that they act in voters' interests. I study a political agency model where a representative voter receives news reports from either one unbiased media outlet (politically aligned with hers) or biased media outlets (which are more extreme). The effect of biased media on the voter's welfare depends critically on the degrees of political polarization and competition between outlets. Low competition between biased news organizations sometimes lowers the voter's welfare especially when politicians are polarized. On the other hand, high competition can improve the voter's welfare only if politicians are polarized. Biased media, polarization, and competition have a positive complementary effect on voter's welfare. This chapter implies that democracy does not need unbiased media; and with the recent rise in polarization, competition between biased news organizations has become more important than ever.