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Voting blocs, party discipline and party formation

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  • Eguia, Jon X.

Abstract

I study the strategic incentives to coordinate votes in an assembly. Coalitions form voting blocs, acting as single players and affecting the policy outcome. In an assembly with two exogenous parties I show how the incentives to accept party discipline depend on the types of the agents, the sizes of the parties, and the rules the blocs use to aggregate preferences. In a game of fully endogenous party formation, I find sufficient conditions for the existence of equilibria with one bloc, two blocs, and multiple blocs.

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  • Eguia, Jon X., 2011. "Voting blocs, party discipline and party formation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 111-135, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:73:y:2011:i:1:p:111-135
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    Cited by:

    1. Zudenkova, Galina, 2011. "A Model of Party Discipline in a Congress," Working Papers 2072/151813, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    2. Jon X. Eguia, 2013. "The Origin of Parties: The United States Congress in 1789–1797 as a Test Case," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 313-334, November.
    3. Johann Caro‐Burnett, 2022. "Optimal voting rules for international organizations, with an application to the United Nations," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 24(6), pages 1463-1501, December.
    4. Motz, Nicolas, 2023. "A career like no one else can offer: On the conditions for two-party dominance," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    5. Bernardo Moreno & María del Pino Ramos-Sosa & Ismael Rodriguez-Lara, 2019. "Conformity and truthful voting under different voting rules," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 53(2), pages 261-282, August.
    6. Pech, Gerald, 2012. "Intra-party decision making, party formation, and moderation in multiparty systems," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 14-22.
    7. Motz, Nicolas, 2016. "How Political Parties Shape Electoral Competition," MPRA Paper 69351, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Curto-Grau, Marta & Zudenkova, Galina, 2018. "Party discipline and government spending: Theory and evidence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 139-152.
    9. Zudenkova, Galina, 2012. "A rationale for intra-party democracy," MPRA Paper 39091, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Caserta, Maurizio & Pluchino, Alessandro & Rapisarda, Andrea & Spagano, Salvatore, 2021. "Why lot? How sortition could help representative democracy," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 565(C).

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