Parties

Thomas Schwartz ()
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Thomas Schwartz: UCLA

Constitutional Political Economy, 2021, vol. 32, issue 4, No 3, 462-475

Abstract: Abstract Here is a full statement of the theory of political parties as long coalitions, ones organized and elected to stick together on all or most legislative votes. The incentive to form, join, and elect them comes from the external cost of simple-majority voting—the central problem of The Calculus of Consent—but more fundamentally from the Paradox of Voting, or cycles of majority preference. I prove that a cycle among prospective legislative outcomes is sufficient for that incentive to be effective, and necessary too: without cycles there would be no parties. The identification of parties with long coalitions originated in a squib written years ago. The chief innovation of this paper is the proven cyclic basis of parties (and with it the absence of parties from one-dimensional voting bodies). Other innovations include extensions of the theory to minority parties, electoral parties, and subnational parties, a deeper explanation than Duvergers’ of two-party systems, and an explanation of how parties maintain their length and use it to prevent defection.

Keywords: Parties; Cycles; Legislatures; Elections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1007/s10602-021-09326-w

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