The Netherlands has a unique tradition in which all major Dutch political parties provide CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis with highly detailed proposals for the tax-benefit system in every national election. This information allows us to quantitatively measure the...

The Netherlands has a unique tradition in which all major Dutch political parties provide CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis with highly detailed proposals for the tax benefit system in every national election. This information allows us to quantitatively measure the...

We develop a dynamic model of political competition. Each party has a policymotivated ideological wing and an office-motivated opportunistic wing. A blockade arises if inner-party conflict stops policy implementation. We use this model to study whether early elections should be used to overcome...

We analyze the relative importance of party ideology and rents from office in the formation of coalitions in a parliamentary democracy. In equilibrium, the types of coalitions that are formed may be minimal winning, minority or surplus and they may be ideologically `disconnected'. The coalitions...

The present paper studies the effects of bandwagon and underdog on the political equilibrium of two-party competition models. We adapt the generalized Wittman-Roemer model of political competition for voter conformism, which views political competition as the one between parties with factions of...