This paper investigates how political accountability with voting pressure disciplines rent-seeking behaviors of the government (i.e., fine revenue maximization) by incorporating a two-period retrospective voting model into a law enforcement setting. For minor/major crimes where the pure rent-seeking enforcement is too strict/weak, the democratic process that provides disciplining incentives (e.g., lower discount rates, higher political rents, and fewer forgone collected fines the government must give up in exchange for reelection) makes the rent-seeking government weaken/strengthen enforcement. However, such discipline can still be insufficient and cause inefficient consequences. Additionally, for intermediate crimes, the democratic process can lead to the government’s inefficient pandering to voters and cause welfare deterioration, even compared to the pure rent-seeking enforcement case. The result shows that different types of distortions happen from previous studies when we consider the conflict between the rent-seeking government and citizens.

本文通过将两期回顾性投票模型纳入执法环境，研究了具有投票压力的政治问责制如何约束政府的寻租行为（即罚款收入最大化）。对于纯粹的寻租执法过于严格/薄弱的轻微/重大犯罪，提供纪律激励的民主程序（例如，较低的贴现率、较高的政治租金和较少的放弃收取的罚款）政府必须放弃以换取连任) 使寻租政府削弱/加强执法。然而，这样的纪律仍然不够充分，导致效率低下的后果。此外，对于中间犯罪，民主进程可能导致政府无效率地迎合选民并导致福利恶化，甚至与纯粹的寻租执法案相比。结果表明，当我们考虑寻租政府与公民之间的冲突时，会出现与以往研究不同类型的扭曲。