Voting Theory generally concludes that -in first-past-the-post elections- 1) All votes should go to effective candidates (Duverger's Law); 2) Parties' platforms should converge (Median Voter Theorem). Observations, though, suggest that such predictions are not met in practice. We show that...

We develop a model of elections in which parties choose their ideological position and the ideology of their candidates. Tighter candidate selection reduces policy uncertainty for voters. We show that weak institutional con- straints, as in a Presidential regime, induce parties to allow their...