Party System Institutionalization, Party Collapse and Party Building

Bankrupt Representation and Party System Collapse

Party Cohesion, Party Factions and Legislative Party Discipline in Italy

Moving beyond a unitary actor assumption that models members of a self-evidently collective entity such as a political party “as if” they all shared a single brain, this paper explores the cohesion and discipline of party legislators in multi-party systems operating under the constitutional rules of parliamentary government. We do this in the context of Italian politics, for which a consistent ...

Voting blocs, party discipline and party formation

I study the strategic incentives to coordinate votes in an assembly. Coalitions form voting blocs, acting as single players and affecting the policy outcome. In an assembly with two exogenous parties I show how the incentives to accept party discipline depend on the types of the agents, the sizes of the parties, and the rules the blocs use to aggregate preferences. In a game of fully endogenous...

Ideology and Party System Development

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...