National Party Platforms, 1840-1972

Party Platforms with Endogenous Party Membership

In representative democracies, the development of party platforms depends on both ideological and electoral considerations. Decisions on party membership, on the other hand, are driven by the relative desirability of party platforms. This paper analyzes the dynamic interaction between party platforms and party membership. It shows how voter mobility, membership costs and the possibility of alie...

Endogenous Party Platforms: “stochastic” Membership

We analyze existence of divergent equilibria in a model of endogenous party platforms with stochastic membership. The parties proposals depend on their membership, while the membership depends both on the proposals of the parties and the unobserved idiosyncratic preferences of citizens over parties. It is shown that when citizens view the parties as similar, apart from their policy proposals (i...

The Scottish National Party

During their lifetime, political parties face a range of strategic dilemmas. Some involve the dilemma between vote, office and policy success (Strøm 1990; De Winter 1998: 238-40). Some revolve around the exact nature of party goals, policies or coalition strategies. However, in some cases, parties also face some fundamental strategic and organisational choices about whether to become parties at...

Spot the difference: Political party platforms compared

Party Platforms in Electoral Competition with Many Constituencies

This paper shows how political parties differentiate to reduce electoral competition. Two parties choose platforms in a unidimensional policy space, and then in a continuum of constituencies with different median voters candidates from the two parties compete in Hotelling-Downs competition. Departing from party platform is costly enough that candidates do not take the median voter’s preferred p...