The Case for Responsible Parties

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.

Activism, Costly Participation, and Polarization

“…My results on the welfare effects of polarization have a similar foundation to the work of Bernhardt, Duggan and Squintani (2009) (henceforth BDS). BDS consider the case for responsible parties in the presence of uncertainty around the median voter's ideal policy.…”

Competition between Specialized Candidates

“…If the election outcome is sufficiently close, then the realized median voter's preferred position is between the two candidates' positions, and consequently, a majority of the electorate would strictly prefer that the election winner adopts a more moderate position than promised during the campaign. 19 Bernhardt, Duggan, and Squintani (2009), who analyze a standard model with uncertainty about the position of the median also find that voters may benefit in expectation from platform divergence that results when parties are policy-motivated instead of office-motivated. 20 Note, though, that the extent of the inefficiency in their model is limited if uncertainty about the location of the median is small.…”

Flexibility vs. protection from an unrepresentative legislative majority

“…When there is symmetric uncertainty over policy outcomes, 1 the quadratic preferences imply that the ex-ante utility of a citizen whose bliss point is always δ from the median equals that of the median minus the constant δ 2 (see Bernhardt et al [2009] or Bernhardt et al [2011]). Hence, maximizing the median citizen's welfare also maximizes the welfare of all citizens.…”