A computational electoral competition model with social clustering and endogenous interest groups as information brokers

Vjollca Sadiraj, Jan Tuinstra and Frans van Winden ()

No 2006-19, Experimental Economics Center Working Paper Series from Experimental Economics Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University

Abstract: We extend the basic model of spatial competition in two directions. First, political parties and voters do not have complete information but behave adaptively. Political parties use polls to search for policy platforms that maximize the probability of winning an election and the voting decision of voters is influenced by social interaction. Second, we allow for the emergence of interest groups. These interest groups transmit information about voter preferences to the political parties, and they coordinate voting behavior. We use simulation methods to investigate the convergence properties of this model. We find that the introduction of social dynamics and interest groups increases the separation between parties platforms, prohibits convergence to the center of the distribution of voter preferences, and increases the size of the winning set.

JEL-codes: D72 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24
Date: 2004-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: A computational electoral competition model with social clustering and endogenous interest groups as information brokers (2006)
Working Paper: A Computational Electoral Competition Model with Social Clustering and Endogenous Interest Groups as Information Brokers (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:exc:wpaper:2006-19

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