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Cycles in public opinion and the dynamics of stable party systems

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  • Brusco, Sandro
  • Roy, Jaideep

Abstract

We study a dynamic model of elections where many parties may enter or exit political competition. At each election a new political leadership arrives for each party. The leadership cannot choose the party's platform (ideological identities are fixed) but must decide whether or not to contest the election. Contesting elections is costly and this cost is higher if the party has recently been inactive. The distribution of voters' ideal policies, or public opinion, changes over time via a Markov process with a state independent persistence parameter. We characterise stable party systems where the set of contestants is invariant to the recent most observed opinion. We show that stable party systems exist only when public opinion is sufficiently volatile, while highly persistent moods lead to instability and change in the party system whenever public opinion changes.

Suggested Citation

  • Brusco, Sandro & Roy, Jaideep, 2016. "Cycles in public opinion and the dynamics of stable party systems," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 413-430.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:100:y:2016:i:c:p:413-430
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2016.10.007
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Sandro Brusco & Jaideep Roy, 2011. "Aggregate uncertainty in the citizen candidate model yields extremist parties," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 36(1), pages 83-104, January.
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    3. Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 1997. "An Economic Model of Representative Democracy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 85-114.
    4. Budge, Ian, 1994. "A New Spatial Theory of Party Competition: Uncertainty, Ideology and Policy Equilibria Viewed Comparatively and Temporally," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(4), pages 443-467, October.
    5. David Byers & James Davidson & David Peel, 1997. "Modelling Political Popularity: an Analysis of Long‐range Dependence in Opinion Poll Series," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 160(3), pages 471-490, September.
    6. Martin J. Osborne & Al Slivinski, 1996. "A Model of Political Competition with Citizen-Candidates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(1), pages 65-96.
    7. Greenberg, Joseph & Shepsle, Kenneth, 1987. "The Effect of Electoral Rewards in Multiparty Competition with Entry," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(2), pages 525-537, June.
    8. Adams, James & Clark, Michael & Ezrow, Lawrence & Glasgow, Garrett, 2004. "Understanding Change and Stability in Party Ideologies: Do Parties Respond to Public Opinion or to Past Election Results?," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(4), pages 589-610, October.
    9. Merrill, Samuel & Grofman, Bernard & Brunell, Thomas L., 2008. "Cycles in American National Electoral Politics, 1854–2006: Statistical Evidence and an Explanatory Model," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 102(1), pages 1-17, February.
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    Cited by:

    1. Paolo Balduzzi & Sandro Brusco, 2019. "Proportional Systems with Free Entry. A Citizen-Candidate Model," Department of Economics Working Papers 19-01, Stony Brook University, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public opinion; Aggregate uncertainty; Party systems;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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