The politics of self-imposed term limits

This article considers how "self-imposed term limits," voluntary pledges by candidates for elected office to step down at the end of their term if elected or reelected, can arise endogenously within a formal model of electoral accountability. To this end, I extend a standard two-period political agency model with adverse selection by appending an election campaign during which two candidates compete with the option to commit not to seek reelection. I show that term limit pledges can emerge in equilibrium without commitment power, revealing their relationship with informative cheap talk. The subsequent analysis considers scenarios where commitment power is necessary for upholding term limit pledges. In these cases, self-imposed term limits allow strong candidates to signal their private type to voters, giving them an electoral advantage over those seeking reelection. However, these candidates' appeal comes not from the informational content of their pledges but from their ability to make policy decisions free from career considerations. I characterize the equilibria of a model specification in which politicians have differing policy preferences, identifying conditions under which term limit pledges are simultaneously informative and improve voter welfare.