Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-wr9vw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-23T13:22:56.714Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Case for Responsible Parties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2009

DAN BERNHARDT ,
JOHN DUGGAN  and
FRANCESCO SQUINTANI
DAN BERNHARDT*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
JOHN DUGGAN*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
FRANCESCO SQUINTANI*
Affiliation:
Universita' degli Studi di Brescia and Essex University
*
Dan Bernhardt is IBE Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1106 S. Prospect Avenue, Champaign, IL 61820 (danber@illinois.edu).
John Duggan is Professor of Political Science and of Economics, W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 (dugg@troi.cc.rochester.edu).
Francesco Squintani is Professore Ordinario di Economia Politica, Universita' degli Studi di Brescia; and, Professor of Economics, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom (squint@essex.ac.uk).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Electoral platform convergence is perceived unfavorably by both the popular press and many academic scholars. Arguably, to paraphrase, “it does not provide enough choice” between candidates. This article provides a formal account of the perceived negative effects of platform convergence. We show that when parties do not know voters' preferences precisely, all voters ex ante prefer some platform divergence to convergence at the ex ante median. After characterizing the unique symmetric equilibrium of competition between responsible (policy-motivated) parties, we conclude that all voters ex ante prefer responsible parties to opportunistic (purely office-motivated) ones when parties are sufficiently ideologically polarized that platforms diverge, but not so polarized that they diverge excessively. However, greater polarization increases the scope for office benefits as an instrument for institutional design. We calculate the socially optimal level of platform divergence and show that office benefits can be used to achieve this first-best outcome, if parties are sufficiently ideologically polarized.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 103 , Issue 4 , November 2009 , pp. 570 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Achen, Christopher H. 1975. “Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response.” American Political Science Review 69: 1218–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, James, Merrill, Samuel III, and Grofman, Bernard. 2005. A Unified Theory of Party Competition: A Cross-National Analysis Integrating Spatial and Behavioral Factors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Althaus, Scott L. 1998. “Information Effects in Collective Preferences.” American Political Science Review 92: 545–58.Google Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, Rodden, Jonathan, and Snyder, James M.. 2008. “The Strength of Issues: Using Multiple Measures to Gauge Preference Stability, Ideological Constraint, and Issue Voting.” American Political Science Review 102: 215–32.Google Scholar
Alesina, A. 1988. “Credibility and Policy Convergence in a Two-Party System with rational Voters.” American Economic Review 78: 796–805.Google Scholar
Aragones, Enriqueta, and Palfrey, Thomas R.. 2002. “Mixed Equilibrium in a Downsian Model with a Favored Candidate.” Journal of Economic Theory 103: 131–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bagnoli, Mark, and Bergstrom, Theodore. 2005. “Log-Concave Probability and Its Applications.” Economic Theory 26: 445–69.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 1996. “Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 40: 194–230.Google Scholar
Bernhardt, Daniel, Duggan, John, and Squintani, Francesco. 2007. “Electoral Competition with Privately Informed Candidates.” Games and Economic Behavior 58: 1–29.Google Scholar
Bernhardt, Daniel, Duggan, John, and Squintani, Francesco. 2009. “Private Polling and Voter Welfare.” Journal of Economic Theory 144: 2021–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besley, Timothy, and Coate, Stephen. 1997. “An Economic Model of Representative Democracy.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112: 85–114.Google Scholar
Black, Duncan. 1958. Theory of Committees and Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Budge, Ian, Klingerman, Hans-Dieter, Volkers, Andrea, Bara, Judith, and Tanenbuam, Eric. 2001. Mapping Policy Preferences I (1945–1998). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callander, Steven, and Wilkie, Simon. 2007. “Lies, Damned Lies, and Political Campaigns.” Games Economic Behavior 60: 262–86.Google Scholar
Calvert, Randall. 1985. “Robustness of the Multidimensional Voting Model: Candidate Motivations, Uncertainty, and Convergence.” American Journal of Political Science 29: 69–95.Google Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Miller, Warren, Converse, Philip, and Stokes, Donald. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Committee on Political Parties. 1950. “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System.” American Political Science Review 44 (suppl).Google Scholar
Converse, Philip. 1962. “Information Flow and the Stability of Partisan Attitudes.” Public Opinion Quarterly 26: 578–99.Google Scholar
Converse, Philip. 1964. “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics.” In Ideology and Discontent, ed. Ernest Apter, David. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 206–61.Google Scholar
Diermeier, Daniel, Keane, Michael, and Merlo, Antonio. 2005. “A Political Economy Model of Congressional Careers.” American Economic Review 95: 347–73.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Fishkin, James S. 1997. The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Fishkin, James S. 2009. Deliberative Polling: Toward a Better-Informed Democracy. Stanford, CA: Center for Deliberative Democracy, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Gilens, Martin. 2001. “Political Ignorance and Collective Policy Preferences.” American Political Science Review 95: 379–96.Google Scholar
Groseclose, Timothy. 2001. “A Model of Candidate Location When One Candidate Has a Valence Advantage.” American Journal of Political Science 45: 862–86.Google Scholar
Gul, Faruk, and Pesendorfer, Wolfgang. 2006. “Partisan Politics and Aggregation Failure with Ignorant Voters.” Princeton University. Mimeo.Google Scholar
Hotelling, Harold. 1929. “Stability in Competition.” Economic Journal 39: 41–57.Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, and Kinder, Donald. 1987. News That Matters: Television and American Opinion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jessee, Stephen. 2009a. “Spatial Voting in the 2004 Presidential Election.” American Political Science Review 103: 1–23.Google Scholar
Jessee, Stephen. 2009b. Testing Spatial Voting Theory in the 2008 Presidential Election. University of Texas at Austin. Mimeo.Google Scholar
Johnson, Norman L., and Kotz, Samuel. 1970. Continuous Univariate Distributions—1. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Kartik, Navin, and McAfee, Preston. 2007. “Signaling Character in Electoral Competition.” American Economic Review 97: 852–70.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. 1966. The Responsible Electorate. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Klingerman, Hans-Dieter, Volkers, Andrea, Bara, Judith, Budge, Ian, and McDonald, Michael. 2006. Mapping Policy Preferences II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luskin, Robert C., Fishkin, James S., and Jowell, Roger. 2002. “Considered Opinions: Deliberative Polling in Britain.” British Journal of Political Science 32: 455–87.Google Scholar
McCarty, Nolan, Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 2006. Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Merrill, S. III, and Grofman, B.. 1999. A Unified Theory of Voting: Directional and Proximity Spatial Models. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mueller, John. 1994. Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Osborne, Martin J., and Slivinski, Al. 1996. “A Model of Political Competition with Citizen-Candidates.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 111: 65–96.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin I. 1978. Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin I., and Shapiro, Robert Y.. 1992. The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palfrey, Thomas R. 1984. “Spatial Equilibrium with Entry.” Review of Economic Studies 51: 139–56.Google Scholar
Poole, Keith T., and Rosenthal, Howard. 1997. Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rugg, Donald. 1941. “Experiments in Wording Questions II.” Public Opinion Quarterly 4: 129–30.Google Scholar
Saporiti, Alejandro. 2008. “Existence and Uniqueness of Nash Equilibrium in Electoral Competition Games: The Hybrid Case.” Journal of Public Economic Theory 10: 827–57.Google Scholar
Schuman, Howard, and Presser, Stanley. 1981. Questions and Answers in Survey Questions. San Diego: Sage.Google Scholar
Shor, Boris. 2009a. “All Together Now: Putting Congress, State Legislatures, and Individuals in a Common Ideological Space.” The University of Chicago. Mimeo.Google Scholar
Shor, Boris. 2009b. “Stronger Bridges: Putting Congress and State Legislatures in Common Ideological Space.” The University of Chicago. Mimeo.Google Scholar
Wittman, Donald. 1983. “Candidate Motivation: A Synthesis of Alternatives.” American Political Science Review 77: 142–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, John R., and Feldman, Stanley. 1992. “A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences.” American Journal of Political Science 36: 579–616.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.