We present a model of two-party competition that relates the distribution of voters' preferences to the formation of the electoral landscape upon which parties choose issue positions. The two parties in the model tend to converge to similar positions on some issues and diverge on other issues,...

We study the relationship between voters' preferences and the emergence of party platforms in two-party democratic elections with adaptive parties. In the model, preferences of voters and the opposition party's platform determine an electoral landscape on which the challenging party must...

We explore the dynamics of a model of two-party competition under spatial voting. The parties are allowed to incrementally adapt their platforms by following the voting gradient imposed by the preferences of the electorate and platform of the opposition. The emphasis in this model is on the...

This paper considers empirically whether preference-based (empirical) power indices differ significantly from their preference-free (theoretical) counterparts. Drawing on the to date most comprehensive sample of EU Council votes (1993-2011), we use item-response models to estimate the EU27...

We study a model of political competition between two candidates with two orthogonal issues, where candidates are office motivated and committed to a particular position in one of the dimensions, while having the freedom to select (credibly) any position on the other dimension. We analyse two...