We develop and study a two-period model of political competition with office- and policymotivated candidates, in which (i) changes of policies impose costs on all individuals and (ii) such costs increase with the magnitude of the policy change. We show that there is an optimal positive level of...

We consider an infinite-horizon model of elections where policy changes are costly for citizens and parties. The so-called costs of change increase with the extent of the policy shift and make policy history-dependent. First, we provide a detailed description of the equilibrium dynamics and...