Abstract
One of the oldest branches of public choice theory, which dates back to Downs (1957) and, more indirectly, even to Hotelling (1929), is the application of game theoretic concepts to the electoral competition among political parties. In the simplest type of models this competition is viewed as a struggle for positions on a left-right scale defined by some ideological or public policy question (”spatial competition”; for overviews and critique see Stokes 1963, Riker and Ordeshook 1973, Holler 1975, 1979). Voters are assumed to be rational utility maximizers with given preferences regarding this question, and there are no restrictions on the choice of election platforms by party leaders. When party competition is considered as a non-cooperative game, it turns out that Nash equilibria exist for any number of parties except three (Selten 1971).
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands
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Breyer, F. (1987). On the Existence of Political Equilibrium in a Three-Party System with Plurality Voting. In: Holler, M.J. (eds) The Logic of Multiparty Systems. International Studies in Economics and Econometrics, vol 17. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3607-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3607-2_6
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