Divergent Platforms

Sophie Bade ()
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Sophie Bade: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn

No 2011_25, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Abstract: A robust feature of models of electoral competition between two opportunistic, purely office-motivated parties is that both parties become indistinguishable in equilibrium. I this short note, I show that this strong connection between the office motivation of parties and their equilibrium choice of identical platforms depends on the following two - possibly counterfactual - assumptions: 1. Issue spaces are uni-dimensional and 2. Parties are unitary actors whose preferences can be represented by expected utility functions. The main goal here is to provide an example of a two-party model in which parties offer substantially different platforms in equilibrium even though no exogenous asymmetries are assumed. In this example, some voters’ preferences over the 2-dimensional issue space are assumed to exhibit non-convexities and parties evaluate their actions with respect to a set of beliefs on the electorate.

Keywords: Downs model; Games with Incomplete Preferences; Knightian Uncertainty; Uncertainty Aversion; Platform Divergence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C79 D72 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-upt
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