The logic of party coalitions with political activism and public financing

Michele Giuranno

POLIS Working Papers from Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS

Abstract: This paper presents a model of party coalition formation between policy- motivated activists and office-seeking opportunists. In this framework, I con- sider how changes in party valence and public financing of political parties shape the equilibrium inside coalitions. Results show that, in equilibrium, op- portunists and activists have the same marginal rate of substitution between policy position and activists'contribution. An asymmetric worsening of one party's valence leads to divergence of its policy platform and a higher degree of activism. Furthermore, public financing of political parties drives activism or idealism out of politics. As a consequence, public financing is an important policy instrument to regulate the trade-o¤ between the degree of activism in politics and the independence of political parties from lobbying.

Keywords: activists; idealism; lobbyists; coalition formation; Nash bargaining; party valence; polarization. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 D72 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2009-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UVtps09fWkkp2WlHl ... 5u6/view?usp=sharing (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uca:ucapdv:134

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in POLIS Working Papers from Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucia Padovani ().