Political Competition with Endogenous Party Formation and Citizen Activists

Emanuel Hansen

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 35-75

Abstract: This paper studies the effects of endogenous party formation on political platforms. It develops a model in which parties allow like-minded citizens to, first, share the cost of running in a public election and, second, coordinate on a policy platform. The paper characterizes the set of political equilibria with two competing parties and with one uncontested party. In two-party equilibria, the distance between both platforms is always positive but limited, in contrast to the median voter model and the citizen candidate model. In one-party equilibria, the median voter can be worse off than in all equilibria with two competing parties.

JEL-codes: D71 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:35-75

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DOI: 10.1257/mic.20200041

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