Power sharing and electoral equilibrium

Alejandro Saporiti

Economic Theory, 2014, vol. 55, issue 3, 705-729

Abstract: This paper considers a model of (consensual) democracy where political parties engage first in electoral competition, and they share policy-making power afterward according with the votes gathered in the election. The paper uncovers the difficulties to guarantee stability in this institutional setting; and it provides a condition of symmetry on parties’ political motivations that ensures the existence of pure strategy equilibrium under a broad family of power sharing rules, ranging from fully proportional to winner-take-all. The equilibrium analysis shows that power sharing and ideology exert a centrifugal force on policy platforms that increases party polarization, with the paradoxical result that consensual democracies can actually lead to more radical electoral campaigns than winner-take-all. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Keywords: Electoral system; Power sharing; Political motivations; Nash equilibrium; Better reply security; C72; D71; D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Working Paper: Power Sharing and Electoral Equilibrium (2013)
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DOI: 10.1007/s00199-013-0772-0

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