This paper examines the institutional determinants of discipline in legislative parties building on the premise that leaders need to maintain support within the organization to continue leading. Payments distributed by the incumbent on the spot increase the value of promises of future benefits...

We study a game theoretic model of a parliamentary democracy under proportional representation where ideologically motivated citizen groups form parties, voting occurs and governments are formed. We study the coalition governments that emerge as functions of the parties' seat shares, the size of...

Does party polarization affect the electoral prospects of a new centrist candidate? The paper investigates this question in the context of a laboratory experiment where a centrist candidate is added to the race, between a left candidate and a right candidate. The experimental design varies the...

We examine the consequences of vote buying, assuming this practice were allowed and free of stigma. Two parties competing in a binary election may purchase votes in a sequential bidding game via up-front binding payments and/or campaign promises (platforms) that are contingent upon the outcome...

We examine the consequences of lobbying and vote buying, assuming this practice were allowed and free of stigma. Two .lobbyists. compete for the votes of legislators by oÞering up-front payments to the legislators in exchange for their votes. We analyze how the lobbyists.budget constraints and...

We examine the consequences of vote buying, assuming this practice were al-lowed and free of stigma. Two parties compete in a binary election and may purchase votes in a sequential bidding game via up-front binding payments and/or campaign promises (platforms) that are contingent upon the...

This paper shows how political parties differentiate to reduce electoral competition. Two parties choose platforms in a unidimensional policy space, and then candidates from these parties compete for votes in a continuum of constituencies with different median voters. Departing from their...

A well-known rationale for representative democracy is that direct democracy leads to a free-rider problem as to the collection of information. A problem with this rationale is that it takes for granted that representatives collect information. In this paper we examine whether or not electoral...

This paper examines the incentives for a party leader in office and for a parties' rank-and-file to replace a sitting member of parliament. As to the leader's decision, we show that the leader prefers to replace a critical member of parliament who votes against the leader's policy. A competent...