IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v19y2007i1p9-31.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Policy-Motivated Parties in Dynamic Political Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Oleg Smirnov

    (Department of Political Science, University of Miami, P.O. Box 248047, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA; osmirnov@miami.edu)

  • James H. Fowler

    (Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, Social Sciences Building 383 #0521, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; jhfowler@ucsd.edu)

Abstract

We analyze a model of a dynamic political competition between two policy-motivated parties under uncertainty. The model suggests that electoral mandates matter: increasing the margin of victory in the previous election causes both parties to shift towards policies preferred by the winner, and the loser typically shifts more than the winner. The model also provides potential answers to a number of empirical puzzles in the field of electoral politics. In particular, we provide possible explanations for why close elections may lead to extreme platforms by both parties, why increased extremism in the platform of one party may lead to greater moderation in the platform of the other party, and why increasing polarization of the electorate causes winning candidates to become more sensitive to mandates. We also show that, contrary to previous findings, increasing uncertainty sometimes decreases platform divergence. Finally, we pay special attention to the proper methodology for doing numerical comparative statics analysis in computational models.

Suggested Citation

  • Oleg Smirnov & James H. Fowler, 2007. "Policy-Motivated Parties in Dynamic Political Competition," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(1), pages 9-31, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:19:y:2007:i:1:p:9-31
    DOI: 10.1177/0951629807071014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629807071014
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951629807071014?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Duggan, John & Fey, Mark, 2005. "Electoral competition with policy-motivated candidates," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 490-522, May.
    2. John E. Roemer, 1997. "Political-economic equilibrium when parties represent constituents: The unidimensional case," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 14(4), pages 479-502.
    3. Ingemar Hansson & Charles Stuart, 1984. "Voting competitions with interested politicians: Platforms do not converge to the preferences of the median voter," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 431-441, January.
    4. 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.
    5. Hetherington, Marc J., 2001. "Resurgent Mass Partisanship: The Role of Elite Polarization," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(3), pages 619-631, September.
    6. David A. M. Peterson & Lawrence J. Grossback & James A. Stimson & Amy Gangl, 2003. "Congressional Response to Mandate Elections," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(3), pages 411-426, July.
    7. Kramer, Gerald H., 1977. "A dynamical model of political equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 310-334, December.
    8. James Fowler, 2005. "Dynamic Responsiveness in the U.S. Senate," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(2), pages 299-312, April.
    9. Davis, Otto A. & Hinich, Melvin J. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1970. "An Expository Development of a Mathematical Model of the Electoral Process," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 64(2), pages 426-448, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Gersbach, Hans & Jackson, Matthew O. & Muller, Philippe & Tejada, Oriol, 2023. "Electoral competition with costly policy changes: A dynamic perspective," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    2. Kenneth Koford, 1982. "Centralized vote-trading," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 245-268, January.
    3. César Martinelli & John Duggan, 2014. "The Political Economy of Dynamic Elections: A Survey and Some New Results," Working Papers 1403, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM.
    4. John W. Patty, 2007. "Incommensurability and Issue Voting," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(2), pages 115-131, April.
    5. Tovey, Craig A., 2010. "The instability of instability of centered distributions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 53-73, January.
    6. James Cochran & David Curry & Rajesh Radhakrishnan & Jon Pinnell, 2014. "Political engineering: optimizing a U.S. Presidential candidate’s platform," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 215(1), pages 63-87, April.
    7. Drouvelis, Michalis & Saporiti, Alejandro & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2014. "Political motivations and electoral competition: Equilibrium analysis and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 86-115.
    8. Hans Gersbach & Philippe Muller & Oriol Tejada, 2015. "Costs of Change, Political Polarization, and Re-election Hurdles," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 15/222, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    9. Assar Lindbeck & Jörgen Weibull, 1987. "Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 273-297, January.
    10. Alejandro Saporiti, 2008. "Existence and Uniqueness of Nash Equilibrium in Electoral Competition Games: The Hybrid Case," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(5), pages 827-857, October.
    11. Drouvelis, Michalis & Saporiti, Alejandro & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2014. "Political motivations and electoral competition: Equilibrium analysis and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 86-115.
    12. De Donder, Philippe & Gallego, Maria, 2017. "Electoral Competition and Party Positioning," TSE Working Papers 17-760, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    13. 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.
    14. McMurray, Joseph, 2017. "Voting as communicating: Mandates, multiple candidates, and the signaling voter's curse," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 199-223.
    15. Alejandro Saporiti, 2010. "Power, ideology, and electoral competition," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1003, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    16. Harold D. Clarke & Euel Elliott & Barry J. Seldon, 1994. "A Utility Function Analysis of Competing Models of Party Support," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 6(3), pages 289-305, July.
    17. Gersbach, Hans & Tejada, Oriol & Muller, Philippe, 2016. "The Effects of Higher Re-election Hurdles and Costs of Policy Change on Political Polarization," CEPR Discussion Papers 11375, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Micael Castanheira, 2003. "Why Vote For Losers?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1207-1238, September.
    19. Andina-Díaz, Ascensión & Feri, Francesco & Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A., 2021. "Institutional flexibility, political alternation, and middle-of-the-road policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    20. JuanD. Carrillo & Micael Castanheira, 2008. "Information and Strategic Political Polarisation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 845-874, July.

    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:sae:jothpo:v:19:y:2007:i:1:p:9-31. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.