Convergence and divergence in dynamic voting with inequality

Corrado Di Guilmi and Giorgos Galanis
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Corrado Di Guilmi: Economics Discipline Group, University of Technology Sydney, Australia, and Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA

Abstract: The original formulation of the median voter theorem predicts parties’ political convergence in a static setup, under two key assumptions : voters preferences being fixed and parties being opportunistic (purely office-motivated). Drawing on recent empirical findings about the evolution of voters’ political preferences, this paper verifies whether the median voter theorem’s results hold when (i) the control variables that influence voters’ preferences endogenously evolve over time, and (ii) parties are not opportunistic. We present a dynamic two-party voting model in which voters’ preferences evolve over time depending on observable common factors and unobservable idiosyncratic characteristics. In such a setting, the convergence of parties’ platforms to the centre is a special case within a range of results that include instability and equilibria at one of the extremes. Moreover, convergence of parties’ platforms is achieved not as the result of electoral strategies, but when neither party has enough support to pursue its agenda.

Keywords: median voter; dynamic voting; political preferences JEL codes: C62; D72; E71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mac, nep-mic and nep-pol
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Journal Article: Convergence and divergence in dynamic voting with inequality (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:wcreta:61

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