Party Competition

Abstract

Party competition for votes in free and fair elections involves complex interactions by multiple actors in political landscapes that are continuously evolving, yet classical theoretical approaches to the subject leave many important questions unanswered. This book offers the first comprehensive treatment of party competition using the computational techniques of agent-based modeling. This exciting new technology enables researchers to model competition between several different political parties for the support of voters with widely varying preferences on many different issues. The book models party competition as a true dynamic process in which political parties rise and fall, a process where different politicians attack the same political problem in very different ways, and where today's political actors, lacking perfect information about the potential consequences of their choices, must constantly adapt their behavior to yesterday's political outcomes. This book shows how agent-based modeling can be used to accurately reflect how political systems really work. It demonstrates that politicians who are satisfied with relatively modest vote shares often do better at winning votes than rivals who search ceaselessly for higher shares of the vote. It reveals that politicians who pay close attention to their personal preferences when setting party policy often have more success than opponents who focus solely on the preferences of voters, that some politicians have idiosyncratic “valence” advantages that enhance their electability—and much more.

Information in elections: Do third inflexible candidates always promote truthful behavior?

“…This is an assumption that aids considerably in the tractability of the problem and is grounded in the real world observation that third parties are usually more dogmatic than mainstream ones. 6 Laver and Hunt (1992) find strong evidence to support this idea. In a study for 25 countries, they asked people to locate in a scale 1-20 the position of the most important parties in their country regarding the following question: "forced to make a choice, would party leaders give up policy objectives in order to get into government or would they sacrifice a place in government in order to maintain policy objectives?".…”

Moderate as Necessary: The Role of Electoral Competitiveness and Party Size in Explaining Parties’ Policy Shifts

“…Hence, the following models, which investigate the mechanism behind our findings for small parties, additionally control for party organization. We use a measure for leadership dominance from Schumacher, Vries, and Vis (2013) which is largely based on the expert survey conducted by Laver and Hunt (1992). 10 The measure ranges from 0 to 30 with higher values indicating more leadership dominance.…”

Taking Portfolios Difference Seriously: A Composite Measure Based on Policy, Office, and Budget in Brazil

“…The prime minister's position is fundamental to all parties. However, for a party linked to industrial interest groups the Ministry of Industry appeals directly to their constituency; for an agrarian party it is of great interest to control the Ministry of Agriculture; and for a green party the Ministry of Environment may be more important than others (LAVER and HUNT, 1992;WARWICK and DRUCKMAN, 2001). …”

“…From an empirical point of view, Laver and Hunt (1992) ordinal difference between ministries, but also by calculating how much each ministry is more important than the others. More recently, some measures have been developed using not only survey data but also parties' manifestos as source of policy emphasis (LAVER, 2001).…”

“…Some ministries are more salient than others, and some ministries are more salient to specific parties than others. The main empirical implication of the salience argument is that the 'prize' is not composed of equivalent or homogenous parts and this fact must be taken into consideration in the proportionality calculus (LAVER and HUNT, 1992;WARWICK and DRUCKMAN, 2001). …”