This chapter develops an Electoral Politics Model of the confidence vote procedure. Unlike agents in the models discussed previously, the agents in the Electoral Politics Model are not motivated exclusively by short-term policy preferences. Instead, they are also motivated by ‘office’ considerations (related to control of the government) and electoral considerations (related to communication with voters). The analysis explores how these various motivations influence strategic behavior in policymaking after government formation is complete. The result is a theory that directs attention away from policy considerations in procedural choice and toward the role that the confidence vote procedure plays in shaping opportunities for political parties to communicate to voters information about political accountability and policy positions.

The chapter has three sections. The first section describes and defends the assumptions of the Electoral Politics Model. I then sketch the results, and the logic underlying these results, in the second section. The third section concludes with a discussion of the empirical implications from the model.

THE MODEL: PARTY MOTIVATIONS AND CONFIDENCE VOTES

The basic structure of the Electoral Politics Model is quite similar to that of the Policy Conflict Model described in Chapter 3. But the Electoral Politics Model contains assumptions about the identity of the agents, their motivations (or utility functions), and their possible strategies (or actions) that are quite different than those found in the Policy Conflict Model. I review these differences in this section.