Elections, Coalitions, and Legislative Outcomes

David Austen-Smith and Jeffrey Banks

American Political Science Review, 1988, vol. 82, issue 2, 405-422

Abstract: Predictions of electoral behavior in a multiparty setting should be a function of the voters' beliefs about how parties will perform following an election. Similarly, party behavior in a legislature should be a function of electoral promises and rewards. We develop a multistage game-theoretic model of three-party competition under proportional representation. The final policy outcome of the game is generated by a noncooperative bargaining game between the parties in the elected legislature. This game is essentially defined by the vote shares each party receives in the general election, and the parties' electoral policy positions. At the electoral stage parties and voters are strategic in that they take account of the legislative implications of any electoral outcome. We solve for equilibrium electoral positions by the parties and final policy outcomes.

Date: 1988
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (179)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Elections, Coalitions, and Legislative Outcomes (1987)
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:cup:apsrev:v:82:y:1988:i:02:p:405-422_08

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().