A Model of Political Competition with Citizen-Candidates

We develop a model of electoral competition in which citizens choose whether or not to run as candidates; a winner implements her favorite policy. The equilibrium number of candidates depends negatively on the cost of running and positively on the beneets of winning. For some parameter values all equilibria under plurality rule have exactly two candidates, whose positions are distinct. Two-candidate elections are more likely under plurality rule than under a runoo system (cf. \Duverger's Law"); the candidates' positions are less diierentiated under a runoo system. There exist equilibria under both systems in which some candidates have no chance of winning. JEL classiication number: D72 We thank David Austen-Smith for provocative discussions on some of the issues raised in this paper, Gary Cox, Herv e Moulin, and two anonymous referees for valuable comments, and Andrei Shleifer for suggestions that improved the exposition. Osborne ([email protected]) thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for nancial support. Some of the work on this paper was done while Slivinski ([email protected]) was a visitor at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy; he thanks the Center and the IUPUI Economics Department for their nancial and other support during his visit.