Crashing the Party? Elites, Outsiders, and Elections

Abstract

We consider an election between two parties that nominate candidates for office. The parties are polarized along a traditional cleavage, but they are also internally divided along a second issue dimension. We introduce a threat of entry from Outsider candidates, who have the prominence and resources to bypass party elites. We consider when voters will turn to Outsiders, and identify the conditions under which Outsiders will enter the election through an established party's nomination process, as opposed to circumventing established parties via a third‐party challenge. We further explore when the elites will fail to respond to the threat of Outsider candidates. Our framework highlights how established parties will be especially vulnerable to Outsider primary entry in periods of intense ideological polarization between the parties, and that this vulnerability is especially heightened for the majority party.

How Polarized are Citizens? Measuring Ideology from the Ground-Up

“…Some areas to highlight are the following. Firstly, there is the literature on democratic politics and populism, with recent examples that include: Acemoglu et al (2013), Algan et al (2017), Buisseret and Van Weelden (2017), Bursztyn et al, Dal Bo et al (2017), Dal Bo et al (2018), Guiso et al (2017), and Rodrik (2017) 4 . As discussed, our work sheds light on the potential long-run ideological underpinnings of these political trends in the population.…”

Tactical Extremism

“…Related literature analyzes the rise of outsider candidates (Buisseret and van Weelden 2017; Karakas and Mitra 2017) and populist parties (Guiso et al 2017). Mainstream policy-motivated parties may also adopt non-median policies (Calvert 1985), which can be welfare enhancing (Bernhardt, Duggan, and Squintani 2009).…”

Democracy by Deterrence: Norms, Constitutions, and Electoral Tilting

“…Our approach expands the growing literature on democratic backsliding in the United States and abroad. Although the failure of party leaders to sustain cooperative norms figures prominently in empirical accounts of democratic erosion, recent formal‐theoretic work concentrates mainly on failures of vertical accountability between politicians and citizens (Buisseret and Van Weelden 2020; Graham and Svolik 2020; Grillo and Prato 2020; Luo and Przeworski 2020; Nalepa, Vanberg, and Chiopris 2021). By instead examining strategic dynamics between party elites, we show how the prospect of future retaliation by the opposition party shapes the incumbent party's decision about engaging in mutual restraint.…”