Abstract
Theoretical analyses of party positions commonly assume that parties act as teams to maximize their legislative representation. This assumption runs counter to another line of theorizing in which individual legislators maximize their own chances of winning reelection. To resolve this tension, the paper presents a model of party platform choice that relaxes only the assumption that parties are teams in the classical two-party spatial model. Platforms are chosen by majority rule among all legislators within a party. Politicians seek to win their own seats in the legislature, but they must run under a common party label. In both single-member district and proportional representation systems, equilibrium platforms are shown to diverge substantially, with one party located near the 25th percentile of the voter distribution and the other near the 75th percentile, rather than converge to the median. The model also yields predictions concerning short-term economic shocks, incumbency advantages, and gerrymandering.
Highlights
This paper presents a model of ideological voters choosing between two competing parties
This can either be interpreted literally, as incumbents voting based on majority rule on a platform, or as an approximation of voters perceiving the aggregate behavior of partisans during the last legislative session and thereby observing the implicit party positions. (For ease of argument the model uses the literal interpretation.) the model assumes that incumbents are not certain about voter choices
In these situations the politicians and voters understand that any platforms announced by individual parties prior to the election are unlikely to be enacted in their stated form – instead, these platforms constitute initial positions from which the parties will negotiate when forming a government
Summary
This paper presents a model of ideological voters choosing between two competing parties. The model assumes that the party position that voters use to decide which party to support is determined by current incumbents in the party This can either be interpreted literally, as incumbents voting based on majority rule on a platform, or as an approximation of voters perceiving the aggregate behavior of partisans during the last legislative session and thereby observing the implicit party positions. (For ease of argument the model uses the literal interpretation.) the model assumes that incumbents are not certain about voter choices This is represented by a valence term in voter utilities that makes all voters more likely to support one party over the other, independent of ideology. Party positions may be further apart, and election results may be less sensitive to economic shocks
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