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Political Parties and Electoral Landscapes

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  • KOLLMAN, KEN
  • MILLER, JOHN H.
  • PAGE, SCOTT E.

Abstract

We study the relationship between voters' preferences and the emergence of party platforms in two-party democratic elections with adaptive parties. In the model, preferences of voters and the opposition party's platform determine an electoral landscape on which the challenging party must adaptively search for votes. We show that changes in the underlying distribution of voters' preferences result in different electoral landscapes which can be characterized by a measure of ruggedness. We find that locally adapting parties converge to moderate platforms regardless of the landscape's ruggedness. Greater ruggedness, however, tempers a party's ability to find such platforms. Thus, we are able to establish a link between the distribution of voters' preferences and the responsiveness of adaptive parties.

Suggested Citation

  • Kollman, Ken & Miller, John H. & Page, Scott E., 1998. "Political Parties and Electoral Landscapes," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(1), pages 139-158, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:28:y:1998:i:01:p:139-158_00
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Michel Schilperoord & Jan Rotmans & Noam Bergman, 2008. "Modelling societal transitions with agent transformation," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 283-301, December.
    2. Jean-François Laslier & Bilge Ozturk Goktuna, 2016. "Opportunist politicians and the evolution of electoral competition," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 381-406, May.
    3. Bärbel M. R. Stadler, 1998. "Abstention Causes Bifurcations in Two-Party Voting Dynamics," Working Papers 98-08-072, Santa Fe Institute.
    4. Michael J. Ensley & Michael W. Tofias & Scott De Marchi, 2009. "District Complexity as an Advantage in Congressional Elections," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 990-1005, October.
    5. Paul V. Warwick, 2004. "Proximity, Directionality, and the Riddle of Relative Party Extremeness," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 16(3), pages 263-287, July.
    6. Forand, Jean Guillaume, 2014. "Two-party competition with persistent policies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 64-91.
    7. Nunnari, Salvatore & Zápal, Jan, 2017. "Dynamic Elections and Ideological Polarization," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(4), pages 505-534, October.
    8. Bilge Öztürk Göktuna, 2019. "A dynamic model of party membership and ideologies," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(2), pages 209-243, April.
    9. Michael Ensley & Scott Marchi & Michael Munger, 2007. "Candidate uncertainty, mental models, and complexity: Some experimental results," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 231-246, July.
    10. Bendor, Jonathan & Diermeier, Daniel & Ting, Michael M., 2000. "A Behavioral Model of Turnout," Research Papers 1627, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    11. Scott de Marchi, 1999. "Adaptive Models and Electoral Instability," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 11(3), pages 393-419, July.
    12. Ken Kollman, 2003. "The Rotating Presidency of the European Council as a Search for Good Policies," European Union Politics, , vol. 4(1), pages 51-74, March.
    13. Vjollca Sadiraj & Jan Tuinstra & Frans Winden, 2006. "A computational electoral competition model with social clustering and endogenous interest groups as information brokers," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 169-187, October.
    14. Jie-Shin Lin, 2005. "An Analysis on Simulation Models of Competing Parties," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 284, Society for Computational Economics.

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