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Cracking the whip: spatial voting with party discipline and voter polarization

The spatial voting theory literature has generally focused on either parties or candidates as the unit of analysis and ignored strategic interactions between them. I study a game theoretic spatial model of elections with many heterogeneous constituencies in which both party and candidate behavior ar...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Waters, T. D. P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6961481/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32009683
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11127-017-0463-7
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author Waters, T. D. P.
author_facet Waters, T. D. P.
author_sort Waters, T. D. P.
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description The spatial voting theory literature has generally focused on either parties or candidates as the unit of analysis and ignored strategic interactions between them. I study a game theoretic spatial model of elections with many heterogeneous constituencies in which both party and candidate behavior are modeled. Parties choose a platform and a ‘whip rate,’ representing the proportion of final policy that will be made by the party, as opposed to by the successful candidates. Candidates are office-motivated and can choose both a platform and a level of advertising in order to defeat their opponent. It is shown that the introduction of whipping as a choice variable can cause party platforms to diverge and that parties will whip on some but not all issues, reflecting the empirical reality of parties influencing rather than determining policy outcomes exclusively. Further, parties respond to sharper voter polarization by reducing the power of the whip as well as distinguishing their platforms from one another, while more voter uncertainty has the opposite effect. Other real-world phenomena, including ‘safe seats’ and legislators voting with their party even when unwhipped, are also shown to be predicted by the model.
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spelling pubmed-69614812020-01-29 Cracking the whip: spatial voting with party discipline and voter polarization Waters, T. D. P. Public Choice Article The spatial voting theory literature has generally focused on either parties or candidates as the unit of analysis and ignored strategic interactions between them. I study a game theoretic spatial model of elections with many heterogeneous constituencies in which both party and candidate behavior are modeled. Parties choose a platform and a ‘whip rate,’ representing the proportion of final policy that will be made by the party, as opposed to by the successful candidates. Candidates are office-motivated and can choose both a platform and a level of advertising in order to defeat their opponent. It is shown that the introduction of whipping as a choice variable can cause party platforms to diverge and that parties will whip on some but not all issues, reflecting the empirical reality of parties influencing rather than determining policy outcomes exclusively. Further, parties respond to sharper voter polarization by reducing the power of the whip as well as distinguishing their platforms from one another, while more voter uncertainty has the opposite effect. Other real-world phenomena, including ‘safe seats’ and legislators voting with their party even when unwhipped, are also shown to be predicted by the model. Springer US 2017-06-26 2017 /pmc/articles/PMC6961481/ /pubmed/32009683 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11127-017-0463-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Article
Waters, T. D. P.
Cracking the whip: spatial voting with party discipline and voter polarization
title Cracking the whip: spatial voting with party discipline and voter polarization
title_full Cracking the whip: spatial voting with party discipline and voter polarization
title_fullStr Cracking the whip: spatial voting with party discipline and voter polarization
title_full_unstemmed Cracking the whip: spatial voting with party discipline and voter polarization
title_short Cracking the whip: spatial voting with party discipline and voter polarization
title_sort cracking the whip: spatial voting with party discipline and voter polarization
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6961481/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32009683
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11127-017-0463-7
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