This chapter gives a flavour of recent theoretical work on coalition formation and political parties. I survey recent work on both pre-election coalition formation and post election coalition (or government) formation. A number of alternative rationales for the formation of parties are compared...

We study the informational effectiveness of electoral campaigns. Voters may not think about all political issues and have incomplete information with regard to political positions of candidates. Nevertheless, we show that if candidates are allowed to microtarget voters with messages then...

Recent developments in information and communication technologies allow candidates for office to engage in sophisticated messaging strategies to influence voter choice. We consider how access to different technologies influence the choice of policy platforms by candidates. We find that when...

In modern elections, ideologically motivated candidates with a wealth of information about individual voters and sophisticated campaign strategies are faced by voters who lack awareness of some political issues and are uncertain about the exact political positions of candidates. We study to what...

We consider voting rules on a multidimensional policy space for a continuum of voters with elliptic preferences. Assuming continuity, gamma -strategy-proofnessmeaning that coalitions of size smaller or equal to a small number gamma cannot manipulateand unanimity, we show that such rules are...

In modern elections, ideologically motivated candidates with a wealth of information about individual voters and sophisticated campaign strategies are faced by voters who lack awareness of some political issues and are uncertain about the exact political positions of candidates. This is the...

In modern elections, ideologically motivated candidates with a wealth of information about individual voters and sophisticated campaign strategies are faced by voters who lack awareness of some political issues and are uncertain about the exact political positions of candidates. We study to what...

Recent developments in information and communication technologies allow candidates for office to engage in sophisticated messaging strategies to influence voter choice. We consider how access to different technologies influence the choice of policy platforms by candidates. We find that when...