IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v46y1985i1p45-60.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The politics of flatland

Author

Listed:
  • Mathew McCubbins
  • Thomas Schwartz

Abstract

A version of the median-voter theorem holds for two-dimensional spatial models in which voters regard the two dimensions as economic goods or goodlike activities and in which the set of feasible outcomes is constrained by budget or technology. Although mathematically trivial, this fact has widespread analytical uses. After arguing that our two-dimensional model, with its stability property, fits a number of important and general policy areas, we use our analysis to address some prominent theoretical issues. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1985

Suggested Citation

  • Mathew McCubbins & Thomas Schwartz, 1985. "The politics of flatland," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 45-60, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:46:y:1985:i:1:p:45-60
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00150963
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00150963
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00150963?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Weisberg, Herbert F. & Rusk, Jerrold G., 1970. "Dimensions of Candidate Evaluation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 64(4), pages 1167-1185, December.
    2. James Enelow & David Koehler, 1979. "Vote trading in a legislative context: An analysis of cooperative and noncooperative strategic voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 157-175, June.
    3. Schwartz, Thomas, 1977. "Collective Choice, Separation of Issues and Vote Trading," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(3), pages 999-1010, September.
    4. Kenneth Shepsle & Barry Weingast, 1981. "Structure-induced equilibrium and legislative choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 503-519, January.
    5. Richard A. Posner, 1974. "Theories of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 5(2), pages 335-358, Autumn.
    6. Joseph Kadane, 1972. "On division of the question," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 47-54, September.
    7. McKelvey, Richard D., 1976. "Intransitivities in multidimensional voting models and some implications for agenda control," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 472-482, June.
    8. Thomas Schwartz, 1981. "The universal-instability theorem," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 487-501, January.
    9. Enelow,James M. & Hinich,Melvin J., 1984. "The Spatial Theory of Voting," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521275156, October.
    10. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    11. Cohen, Linda, 1979. "Cyclic sets in multidimensional voting models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 1-12, February.
    12. Gordon Tullock, 1981. "Why so much stability," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 189-204, January.
    13. Richard A. Posner, 1971. "Taxation by Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 2(1), pages 22-50, Spring.
    14. Norman Schofield, 1978. "Instability of Simple Dynamic Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 45(3), pages 575-594.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Norman Schofield, 1986. "Existence of a ‘structurally stable’ equilibrium for a non-collegial voting rule," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 267-284, January.
    2. Congleton, Roger D. & Tollison, Robert D., 1999. "The stability inducing propensities of very unstable coalitions: avoiding the downward spiral of majoritarian rent-seeking," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 193-205, June.
    3. Amihai Glazer & Bernard Grofman, 1988. "Limitations of the spatial model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 161-167, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas Bräuninger, 2007. "Stability in Spatial Voting Games with Restricted Preference Maximizing," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(2), pages 173-191, April.
    2. Thomas Schwartz, 2011. "One-dimensionality and stability in legislative voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 197-214, July.
    3. Kenneth Koford, 1982. "Why so much stability? An optimistic view of the possibility of rational legislative decisionmaking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 3-19, March.
    4. Tovey, Craig A., 2010. "The instability of instability of centered distributions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 53-73, January.
    5. P. Hägg, 1997. "Theories on the Economics of Regulation: A Survey of the Literature from a European Perspective," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 4(4), pages 337-370, December.
    6. Dean Lacy & Emerson M.S. Niou, 2000. "A Problem with Referendums," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 12(1), pages 5-31, January.
    7. Itai Sened, 1991. "Contemporary Theory of Institutions in Perspective," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 3(4), pages 379-402, October.
    8. John Goodman & Philip Porter, 1988. "Theory of competitive regulatory equilibrium," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 51-66, October.
    9. Kenneth Koford, 1982. "Centralized vote-trading," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 245-268, January.
    10. Matthew D. Mitchell, 2019. "Uncontestable favoritism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 167-190, October.
    11. Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2014. "Empirical social choice: an introduction," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 297-310, March.
    12. Claudio Bonilla, 2004. "A Model of Political Competition in the Underlying Space of Ideology," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 51-67, October.
    13. Kenneth Shepsle & Barry Weingast, 2012. "Why so much stability? Majority voting, legislative institutions, and Gordon Tullock," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 83-95, July.
    14. Fabio Padovano, 2013. "Are we witnessing a paradigm shift in the analysis of political competition?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 631-651, September.
    15. Dennis Mueller, 2012. "Gordon Tullock and Public Choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 47-60, July.
    16. Norman Schofield, 1995. "Coalition Politics," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 7(3), pages 245-281, July.
    17. Knudson, Mathew, 2020. "Two candidate competition on differentiated policy sets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 413-434.
    18. Roger D. Congleton, 2018. "Intellectual foundations of public choice, the forest from the trees," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 229-244, June.
    19. Larry Samuelson, 1987. "A test of the revealed-preference phenomenon in congressional elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 141-169, January.
    20. Mat McCubbins & Roger Noll & Barry Weingast, 2005. "The Political Economy of Law: Decision-Making by Judicial, Legislative, Executive and Administrative Agencies," Discussion Papers 04-035, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:46:y:1985:i:1:p:45-60. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.