On the benefits of party competition

Dan Bernhardt, Larissa Campuzano, Francesco Squintani () and Odilon Câmara

Games and Economic Behavior, 2009, vol. 66, issue 2, 685-707

Abstract: We study the role of parties in a citizen-candidate repeated-elections model in which voters have incomplete information. We first identify a novel "party competition effect" in a setting with two opposing parties. Compared with "at large" selection of candidates, party selection makes office-holders more willing to avoid extreme ideological stands, and this benefits voters of all ideologies. We then allow for additional parties. With strategic voting, citizens benefit most when the only two parties receiving votes are more moderate. With sincere voting, even with three parties, extreme parties can thrive at the expense of a middle party; and whether most citizens prefer two or three parties varies with model parameters.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899-8256(08)00199-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:gamebe:v:66:y:2009:i:2:p:685-707

Access Statistics for this article

Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai

More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().