We analyze a one-dimensional model o spatial political competition with two parties anduncertainty on the distribution of voters'types. We assume that parties are formed by regularmembers and professional politicians; members care about the policy enacted, while professionalpoliticians, on the contrary, only care about winning the election. We consider two possibilities:that members choose the political platforms and that professional politicians are the ones whochoose such platforms. The expected utility for party members is analyzed under these two cases.We find that when professional politicians have no informational advantage, it is on the interest ofboth parties to let professional politicians choose the platforms. Only in the case in whichprofessional politicians have much better information than the members of the party about votersis it possible that party members obtain a greater expected utility choosing the platformsthemselves rather than letting the professional politicians choose.
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Paper provided by Valencia - Instituto de Investigaciones Economicas in its series Papers with number
98-22.