Entry deterrence in electoral spatial competition

 In this paper we examine a model of electoral competition with entry costs, where several established parties compete against each other under the threat of potential entry. Assuming single-peakedness of the distribution of voters’ ideal points, we show that, if there are two established parties, an equilibrium always exists and is unique, and demonstrate that the Hotelling-Downs and the Smithies-Palfrey equilibria represent special cases of the equilibrium in our model. If there are more than two established parties, an equilibrium is always unique and there exists an upper bound on the values of entry cost which guarantee the existence of an equilibrium. Received: 3 July 1995/Accepted: 10 June 1996     

An empirical analysis of valence in electoral competition

Spatial models of voting have dominated mathematical political theory since the seminal work of Downs. The Downsian model assumes that each elector votes on the basis of his utility function which depends only on the distance between his preferred policy platform and the ones proposed by candidates. A succession of papers introduces valence issues into the model, i.e., candidates’ characteristics which are independent of the platforms they propose. So far, little is known about which of the existing utility functions used in valence models is the most empirically founded. Using a large survey run prior to the 2007 French presidential election, we evaluate and compare several spatial voting models with valence. Existing models perform poorly in fitting the data. However, strong empirical regularities emerge. This leads us to a new model of valence that we call the intensity valence model. This new model makes sense theoretically and is grounded empirically.     

On the influence of extreme parties in electoral competition with policy-motivated candidates

We study and compare equilibrium platforms in models of unidimensional electoral competition with two and four policy motivated parties. We first analyze the plurality game, where the party getting the most votes is elected and implements its proposed platform. Restrictions on the set of credible announcements are needed to get existence of equilibria. Comparing equilibria with two and four parties, we obtain that moderate parties react to the introduction of extreme parties by proposing the same or more extreme equilibrium platforms. We then study the proportional system, where the policy implemented is a weighted sum of the proposals, with the voting shares as weights. Here, the existence of extreme parties leads moderate ones to choose more centrist platforms. We finally test the robustness of our results with respect to, first, the enlargement of the strategy space to entry decisions and, second, to asymmetric distributions of voters' blisspoints.

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Support for campaign spending limitations in the U. S. senate: The role of party,ideology and electoral security

Recent media disclosures of American campaign funding raising practices in the 1996 election have renewed political interest in campaign finance reform. This paper examines senatorial support for the McCain/Feingold measure that would have established voluntary spending limits on senate candidates and banned unlimited campaign contributions through political party organizations. While party affiliation and senator ideology are very important in explaining support for the McCain/Feingold measure, various measures of electoral security are not significant. This is important because the public choice literature emphasizes that electoral security is the primary goal of legislators. Additionally, the electoral self-interest of legislators is probably much more accurately measured by the various electoral security measures used in this study than by the constituency measures typically employed in the public choice literature. Nevertheless, personal legislator electoral security is not a powerful explanatory factor.     

Altruism and envy in contests: An evolutionarily stable symbiosis

Altruists and envious people who meet in contests are symbionts. They do better than a population of narrowly rational individuals. If there are only altruists and envious individuals, a particular mixture of altruists and envious individuals is evolutionarily stable.I thank Helmut Bester, Friedel Bolle, Werner Güth and an anonymous referee for very helpful comments. The usual caveat applies. For a broader discussion of the economics of envy and a brief literature survey see, e.g., Mui (1995). Altruism has been discussed even more widely. Key references are Becker (1974, 1976), Lindbeck and Weibull (1988) and Bruce and Waldman (1990).     

Estimating the effects of activists in two-party and multi-party systems: comparing the United States and Israel

This article presents an electoral model where activist groups contribute resources to their favored parties. These resources are then used by the party candidates to enhance the electoral perception of their quality or valence. We construct an empirical model of the United States presidential election of 2008 and employ the electoral perception of the character traits of the two candidates. We use a simulation technique to determine the local Nash equilibrium, under vote share maximization, of this model. The result shows that the unique vote-maximizing equilibrium is one where the two candidates adopt convergent positions, close to the electoral center. This result conflicts with the estimated positions of the candidates in opposed quadrants of the policy space. The difference between estimated positions and equilibrium positions allows us to estimate the influence of activist groups on the candidates. We compare this estimation with that of Israel for the election of 1996, and show that vote maximization leads low valence parties to position themselves far from the electoral origin. We argue that these low valence parties in Israel will be dependent on support of radical activist groups, resulting in a degree of political fragmentation.     

Choosing an electoral rule: Values and self-interest in the lab

We study the choice of multi-person bargaining protocols in the context of politics. In politics, citizens are increasingly involved in the design of democratic rules, for instance via referendums. If they support the rule that best serves their self-interest, the outcome inevitably advantages the largest group. In this paper, we challenge this pessimistic view with an original lab experiment, in which 252 subjects participated. In the first stage, these subjects experience elections under plurality and approval voting. In the second stage, they decide which rule they want to use for extra elections. We find that egalitarian values that subjects hold outside of the lab shape their choice of electoral rule in the second stage when a rule led to a fairer distribution of payoffs compared to the other one in the first stage. The implication is that people have consistent ‘value-driven preferences’ for decision rules.     

Micro foundations of multi-prize lottery contests: a perspective of noisy performance ranking

This article proposes a multi-prize noisy-ranking contest model. Contestants are ranked in descending order based on their perceived performance, which is subject to random perturbation, and they are rewarded based on their ranks. Under plausible conditions, we establish that our noisy performance ranking model is stochastically equivalent to the family of multi-prize lottery contests built upon ratio-form contest success functions. We further establish the equivalence of our model to a contest model that ranks contestants by their best performance out of multiple independent attempts. These results therefore shed light on the micro-foundations of the popularly adopted lottery contest models. The “best-shot ranking rule” reveals a common thread that connects a broad class of seemingly disparate competitive activities (such as rent-seeking contests, patent races, research tournaments), and unifies them through a common performance evaluation mechanism.     

Women in elite positions: Insiders or outsiders?

Formal institutional locations and informal participation in elite networks are examined for women and men occupying principal decision-making positions in powerful institutions in three advanced societies: the United States, West Germany, and Australia. In all three countries, the few women are concentrated in a small number of elite positions, especially those set aside for women. Social backgrounds vary, with women coming from somewhat higher status and class origins than their male counterparts. Further, network analyses reveal that men are more integrated than women in informal elite networks in all three nations. The results suggest that women in formal positions of power remain outsiders on the inside.     

Framing contests in global NGO networks: How controversies enable and challenge collaboration and action

In multistakeholder sustainability initiatives, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) need not only to negotiate with actors from other sectors, but also with other NGOs. Taking a framing perspective, this study examines how NGOs engage in framing contests because of their collaborative attitude toward the private sector. Through an analysis of Oxfam's participation in the Shrimp Aquaculture Dialogues, the paper examines the interplay between NGOs that propose and oppose certification as a viable strategy for ensuring sustainability in the farmed shrimp sector. The results show that controversies among NGO groups related prognostic framing (i.e., regarding the proposed solution to a problem) are characterized by specific ontological and normative attributes. The paper offers NGOs strategies for dealing with such controversies and shows that, depending on the nature of the controversy, engaging in framing contests might enlarge or constrain the roles that an NGO is able to play in a multistakeholder setting, particularly, when it comes to preserving its independence while securing interdependence with others.     

A theory of policy differentiation in single issue electoral politics

Voter preferences are characterized by a parameter s (say, income) distributed on a set S according to a probability measure F. There is a single issue (say, a tax rate) whose level, b, is to be politically decided. There are two parties, each of which is a perfect agent of some constituency of voters, voters with a given value of s. An equilibrium of the electoral game is a pair of policies, b ₁ and b ₂, proposed by the two parties, such that b _i maximizes the expected utility of the voters whom party i represents, given the policy proposed by the opposition. Under reasonable assumptions, the unique electoral equilibrium consists in both parties proposing the favorite policy of the median voter. What theory can explain why, historically, we observe electoral equilibria where the ‘right’ and ‘left’ parties propose different policies? Uncertainty concerning the distribution of voters is introduced. Let {F(t)} _{t ε T} be a class of probability measures on S; all voters and parties share a common prior that the distribution of t is described by a probability measure H on T. If H has finite support, there is in general no electoral equilibrium. However, if H is continuous, then electoral equilibrium generally exists, and in equilibrium the parties propose different policies. Convergence of equilibrium to median voter politics is proved as uncertainty about the distribution of voter traits becomes small.     

Contest time: time, territory, and representation in the postmodern electoral crisis

Prior generations’ electoral crises (e.g., gerrymandering) have dealt mainly with political maneuverings around geographical shifts. We analyze four recent (1998–2003) American electoral crises: the Clinton impeachment controversy, the 2000 Florida presidential election, the Texas legislators’ flight to Oklahoma and New Mexico, and the California gubernatorial recall. We show that in each case temporal manipulation was at least as important as geographical. We highlight emergent electoral practices surrounding the manipulation of time, which we dub “temporal gerrymandering.” We suggest a theory of postmodern electoral crises, in which the rules of time and space are simultaneously in flux. These crises expose concerns with early American democratic theory, which was based on an understanding of “the people” as geographically and temporally unidimensional. Representative systems, therefore, were designed largely without reference to geographic and temporal complexity.     

Seeing beyond the datasets: the unexploited structure of electoral and institutional data

We propose relational data modeling as a tool for replacing the ad hoc and uncoordinated approaches commonly used throughout the social sciences to gather, store, and disseminate data. We demonstrate relational data modeling using global electoral and political institutional data. We define a relational data model as a map of concepts, their attributes, and the relationships between concepts developed using a formal language and according to a set of rules. To demonstrate the methodology, we design a simple relational data model of six concepts: countries, parties, elections, districts, institutions, and election results. Furthermore, we introduce a data model to solve the particularly vexing issue of party discontinuity (party splits, mergers, and alliances). We show how the solution facilitates computational tasks, such as the calculation of core measures of political phenomena (ex: electoral volatility). Ultimately, a relational data approach will play a central role in collective investments to develop advanced data capabilities, and thereby advance the accuracy, pace, and transparency of scholarship in the social sciences.     

Equity and effectiveness of optimal taxation in contests under an all-pay auction

The means of contest design may include differential taxation of the prize. This paper considers all-pay auctions under complete information and establishes that, given a revenue-maximizing contest designer who faces a balanced-budget constraint, the optimal taxation scheme corresponding to an all-pay auction is appealing in two senses. First, it ensures extreme equitable final prize valuations. Second, it is effective; it yields total contestants’ efforts that are larger than those obtained under almost any pure-strategy equilibrium of a Tullock-type lottery contest.     

Doubly disadvantaged: Unemployment,young age,and electoral participation in the United Kingdom

Previous studies examine how unemployment affects socio-political behaviour, but this literature has scarcely focused on the role of the life-course. Integrating the frameworks of unemployment scarring and political socialisation, we posit that unemployment experiences, or scars, undermine electoral participation, and that this is exacerbated at younger ages. We test these hypotheses relying on the British Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society datasets (1991–2020), employing panel data analysis approaches as Propensity Score Matching, Individual Fixed Effects, and Individual Fixed Effects with Individual Slopes. Results suggest that unemployment experiences depress electoral participation in the UK, with effect sizes around −5% of a Standard Deviation in turnout. However, this effect varies powerfully by age: the impact of unemployment on electoral participation is stronger at younger ages (−21% SD at age 20), and weaker to not significant after age 35. This is robust across the three main approaches and several robustness checks. Further analyses show that the first unemployment spell matters the most for electoral participation, and that for individuals under 35, there is a scar effect lasting up to 5 years after the first unemployment spell. The life-course emerges as central to better understand the relationship between labour market hardships and socio-political behaviour.     

Spanish anarchist engagements in electoralism: from street to party politics

The eruption of the Spanish 15M movement in 2011 was marked by a high degree of political participation and creative experimentation. The political repertoire has constantly been re-evaluated, with methods revised and evolving, from the occupation of public spaces to the recent creation of new constitutional parties. One of the key aspects of these tactical revisions has been the involvement of anarchist actors in an experimental process of engagement in electoral processes, a method of political engagement anarchists standardly oppose. Our study identifies the motivations and theoretical justifications that have recently led libertarian activists to take the electoral path. This paper stands in the small but growing tradition of works that examine the recent phenomenon of new parties built by ‘street’ activists, but uniquely concentrates on a detailed case study of the anarchist actors linked to the platform Castelló en Moviment (CsM). It thus describes the anarchist influence in recent electoral developments, identifies proponents’ justifications for engaging in these previously rejected methods and highlights some of the doubts raised about the electoral experiment.     

Communication in Cournot competition: An experimental study

This study investigates the impact of communication on outcomes in Cournot duopoly and triopoly experiments. Communication is implemented by two different devices, a ‘standardized-communication’ and a ‘free-communication’ device. Using both students and managers as subjects, we find that managers behave in a similar way under both communication devices, while students collude slightly better under free than under standardized communication. Second, while under standardized communication managers select lower outputs than students, we observe no difference in subject pools under free communication. Finally, we observe more collusion in duopoly than in triopoly.