Valence Politics and Equilibrium in Spatial Election Models

Stephen Ansolabehere and James Snyder

Public Choice, 2000, vol. 103, issue 3-4, 327-36

Abstract: Spatial models of two-party or two-candidate competition almost never have pure-strategy Nash equilibria when the issue space has more than one dimension. This paper shows that the introduction of valence issues can create conditions where equilibria exist, even in a multidimensional setting. We derive sufficient conditions for the existence of equilibria, and characterize the spatial locations of two competing parties or candidates when such equilibria exist. The party with the advantage on the valence dimension will generally take a moderate position on the positional issues. We consider the implications of these results for public perceptions of the parties, incumbency advantages, and realigning elections. Copyright 2000 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (165)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0048-5829/contents link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:pubcho:v:103:y:2000:i:3-4:p:327-36

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().