We study a game-theoretic model where three political parties (left, median and right) can form coalitions both before and after the election. Before the election, coalitions can commit to a seat-sharing arrangement, but not to a policy platform or a division of rents from office; coalition members are free to break up and join other coalitions after the election. Equilibrium pre-electoral coal...

We develop a model of government personnel policy with electoral competition in an effort to understand when high quality bureaucracies will be created and sustained. In the model, two parties compete for office over an infinite horizon, and politicians in office choose a mix between civil servants (who produce public goods in a good bureaucracy) and patronage appointees (who produce private go...

Most policymakers and economists agree that the quality of a nation’s human capital stock is a chief determinant of economic growth. However, public spending on education also has serious implications for the future distribution of resources in society. This study examines how these distributional concerns are realized in the arena of party politics. Three key questions are explored. Firstly, w...

A marketing planning framework to aid political parties in improving their image and co-ordinating election campaigns has been developed to reflect the changing nature of electoral campaigning in the developed world towards the need for more long-term planning; together with the development and implementation of marketing models in a wider sphere of social situations. The planning model has bee...

Through an analysis of the 1994 through 2016 General Social Surveys, this article demonstrates that a substantial proportion of eligible voters within the working class turned away from solid identification with either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party during the Obama presidency. Even before the 2016 election cycle commenced, conditions were uncharacteristically propitious for a Rep...

The friends-and-neighbors effect, which refers to voters' tendency support politicians near hometown areas, has not yet been tested systematically for party leaders. Linking a built-for-purpose dataset on 266 leaders sample of 380,208 voters from 50 country elections in 19 parliamentary democracies drawn the Comparative Study Electoral Systems (CSES) project, this article examines effect leader...

To assess the impact of electoral systems on voting turnout, cross-national studies can be usefully complemented by studies of turnout in local elections in countries using more than one electoral system at that level. In this article, we look at data from a 1998 survey of Swiss municipalities to revisit the findings of our earlier study. This previous study, based on a 1988 survey, concluded, ...

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...