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Voting competitions with interested politicians: Platforms do not converge to the preferences of the median voter

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Abstract

We examine equilibrium voting strategies for elections with interested politicians facing uncertainty about voter pReferences. If politicians' utilities are defined over the set of strategies that voters select (instead of being dependent only on the probability of winning an election), equilibrium strategies will diverge (instead of converging to the median voter's pReferences) as long as politicians have different pReferences. We present conditions (i) for political compromise, and (ii) for politicians with different utility functions to merge into parties with complete strategic agreement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lund, Sweden

    Ingemar Hansson

  2. Department of Economics, University of California at Santa Barbara, 93106, Santa Barbara, CA

    Charles Stuart

Authors
  1. Ingemar Hansson
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  2. Charles Stuart
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Additional information

Thanks are due to Peter Aranson, Mark Feldman, and a referee. The research support of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.

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Hansson, I., Stuart, C. Voting competitions with interested politicians: Platforms do not converge to the preferences of the median voter. Public Choice 44, 431–441 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00119691

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