In this paper, we contend that party realignments occur due to the interaction of candidates and activists. We examine independent party candidates who are motivated primarily to win elections but who use activist contributions to increase vote shares. In a two-dimensional policy space, such candidates will on occasion engage in “flanking” moves so as to enlist coalitions of disaffected voters,...

Executive Summary This paper discusses impediments to female candidate success in national elections in the Western Melanesian country of Solomon Islands. Increased female representation in parliaments is desirable both for reasons of gender equity and because evidence suggests such increases come coupled with development benefits. Yet, while numbers of women members of parliament (MPs) are inc...

Formal models of voting usually assume that political agents, whether parties or candidates, attempt to maximize expected vote shares. ‘Stochastic’ models typically derive the ‘mean voter theorem’ that each agent will adopt a ‘convergent’ policy strategy at the mean of the electoral distribution. In this article, it is argued that this conclusion is contradicted by empirical evidence. Estimates...

Village elections in China present scholars with the case of a single-party regime that allows voters to reject candidates regularly. Using a micro survey of 698 voters in 30 rural election districts, the authors demonstrate that when some candidates can lose, voters participate. A comparison of models of voter turnout and running for office further demonstrates that even when competition is st...

The concession and victory speech is a ritual in American politics, described by Corcoran as a “rite of capitulation,” in which both candidates at the end of an election sanction the legitimacy of the process, agree on the outcome, and start the political transition. Concession and victory speeches emerged as a distinct convention in the television era, but as web services like Twitter take on ...

I study a small open economy in which electoral uncertainty affects and is affected by capital inflows. Two candidates, one favoring workers and another favoring entrepreneurs, run for office; the winner chooses tax policy, which affects investment returns. A pro labor electoral victory results in a "sudden stop" in investment and capital flows, reflecting a time inconsistency problem. While th...

In this paper we model the interaction between parties and candidates to highlight the mechanisms by which parties selecting candidates may discipline legislators. Parties are long-lived organizations providing incentives to short-lived candidates. The incentive problem parties face is very similar to the problem faced by firms that try to motivate workers. However parties are different from fi...

Elections are defining moments in which the stability of democracies is tested. The behavior of losing parties is key in this stage of the democratic process. In authoritarian regimes, losing parties might reasonably challenge the outcome of elections as consequence of widespread and systematic fraud that reverts the outcome of the election. However, post-election disputes also happen in 21% of...

nowadays, election is one of the important issues in all the countries that their political system is based on democracy. this study investigated the effectiveness of promotional tools on the behavior of voters in the eleventh round of iran's presidential election. in this study, media campaign tools were divided into two categories of media and non-media ones and the effect of each on the vote...

We provide a stochastic electoral model of the US Presidential election where candidates take differences across states into account when developing their policy platforms and advertising campaigns. Candidates understand the political and economic differences that exist across states and voters care about candidates’ policies relative to their ideals, about the frequency of candidates’ advertis...