Stability in electoral competition: A case for multiple votes

Dimitrios Xefteris

University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics from University of Cyprus Department of Economics

Abstract: It is well known that the Hotelling-Downs model generically fails to admit an equilibrium when voting takes place under the plurality rule (Osborne 1993). This paper studies the Hotelling-Downs model considering that each voter is allowed to vote for up to k candidates and demonstrates that an equilibrium exists for a non-degenerate class of distributions of voters’ ideal policies - which includes all log-concave distributions - if and only if (k=2). That is, the plurality rule (k=1) is shown to be the unique k-vote rule which generically precludes stability in electoral competition. Regarding the features of k-vote rules’ equilibria, first, we show that there is no convergent equilibrium and, then, we fully characterize all divergent equilibria. We study comprehensively the simplest kind of divergent equilibria (two-location ones) and we argue that, apart from existing for quite a general class of distributions when k = 2, they have further attractive properties - among others, they are robust to free-entry and to candidates’ being uncertain about voters’ preferences.

Keywords: Hotelling-Downs model; equilibrium; multiple votes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2015-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-hpe and nep-pol
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Journal Article: Stability in electoral competition: A case for multiple votes (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucy:cypeua:09-2015

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