Why do some new political parties take root after rising to electoral prominence, while others collapse after their initial success? Although strong parties are critical for stable, high-quality democracy, relatively little is known about the conditions under which strong parties emerge. The classic literature on party-system development is largely based on studies of the United States and West...

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...

[150 words] In spite of electoral change since the 1990s, party composition of government changes less and established parties stay in office longer than others regardless their electoral fortunes. This development is conducive to incongruence between the changing pattern of parties represented in parliament and those getting into government. It is argued that office seeking behaviour has becom...

This paper examines party preferences in Israel from 1993 to 1999. This period provides a unique ‘natural’ experiment in that the middle was marked by a change from a single-ballot party list to a two-ballot system that included direct election of the Prime Minister. The paper has two goals: (1) to explore the patterns of social cleavage voting in Israel during this period; and (2) to determine...

[150 words] In spite of electoral change since the 1990s, party composition of government changes less and established parties stay in office longer than others regardless their electoral fortunes. This development is conducive to incongruence between the changing pattern of parties represented in parliament and those getting into government. It is argued that office seeking behaviour has becom...

Models of party competition building on Downs (1957) have recognized that there are centrifugal and centripetal forces in party competition; but one such force, the existence of party primaries, has been remarkably neglected in recent literature. We consider party/candidate policy divergence in two-party competition in one dimension where there is a two-stage electoral process, e.g., a primary ...

Each election revives the issue of party candidates’ and leaders’ appeal, their ‘electability’ in almost all electoral systems, everywhere around world. Therefore, study leaders an...

Following Kreuzer’s (2010) methodological pleas, I first reflect, at the conceptual level, on the ways in which historical research and political science should be related to each other. I then apply some of those considerations to examine two key “moments” in the theory (and history) of institutional choice that I first presented in Boix (1999): the underlying conditions that shaped the intere...

This paper thus addresses two primary issues. What is the relationship between the types of electoral systems that have been used to govern initial elections in the democratizing states of Africa and the degree to which party systems volatility has emerged? What other factors impact on the levels of volatility? I examine the above questions using data from 31 African countries. I find that most...