A Theory Of Party Competition

This book integrates spatial and behavioral perspectives - in a word, those of the Rochester and Michigan schools - into a unified theory of voter choice and party strategy. The theory encompasses both policy and non-policy factors, effects of turnout, voter discounting of party promises, expectations of coalition governments, and party motivations based on policy as well as office. Optimal (Nash equilibrium) strategies are determined for alternative models for presidential elections in the US and France, and for parliamentary elections in Britain and Norway. These polities cover a wide range of electoral rules, number of major parties, and governmental structures. The analyses suggest that the more competitive parties generally take policy positions that come close to maximizing their electoral support, and that these vote-maximizing positions correlate strongly with the mean policy positions of their supporters.

"To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political outcomes has long been obvious to ordinary Americans, most pundits and scholars have virtually dismissed this assumption. Even in light of skyrocketing campaign costs, the belief that major financial interests primarily determine who parties nominate and where they stand on the issues—that, in effect, Democrats and Republicans are merely the left and right wings of the "Property Party"—has been ignored by most political scientists. Offering evidence ranging from the nineteenth century to the 1994 mid-term elections, Golden Rule shows that voters are "right on the money." Thomas Ferguson breaks completely with traditional voter centered accounts of party politics. In its place he outlines an "investment approach," in which powerful investors, not unorganized voters, dominate campaigns and elections. Because businesses "invest" in political parties and their candidates, changes in industrial structures—between large firms and sectors—can alter the agenda of party politics and the shape of public policy. Golden Rule presents revised versions of widely read essays in which Ferguson advanced and tested his theory, including his seminal study of the role played by capital intensive multinationals and international financiers in the New Deal. The chapter "Studies in Money Driven Politics" brings this aspect of American politics into better focus, along with other studies of Federal Reserve policy making and campaign finance in the 1936 election. Ferguson analyzes how a changing world economy and other social developments broke up the New Deal system in our own time, through careful studies of the 1988 and 1992 elections. The essay on 1992 contains an extended analysis of the emergence of the Clinton coalition and Ross Perot's dramatic independent insurgency. A postscript on the 1994 elections demonstrates the controlling impact of money on several key campaigns. This controversial work by a theorist of money and politics in the U.S. relates to issues in campaign finance reform, PACs, policymaking, public financing, and how today's elections work.

John Roemer presents a unified and rigorous theory of political competition between parties and he models the theory under many specifications, including whether parties are policy oriented or oriented toward winning, whether they are certain or uncertain about voter preferences, and whether the policy space is uni- or multidimensional.

Most theories of elections assume that voters and political actors are fully rational. This title provides a behavioral theory of elections based on the notion that all actors - politicians as well as voters - are only boundedly rational.

DIVA marriage of behavioral and formal theory to explain the electoral strategies of political parties /div

In countries with multiparty political systems, we assume--if the system is going to work--that parties have relatively stable positions on policy, that these positions diverge, and that voters make choices based on policy preferences. Yet much of the research on voter behavior and party competition does not support these assumptions. In Party Competition, James Adams applies the insights of behavioral research to an examination of the policy strategies that political parties (and candidates) employ in seeking election. He argues that vote-seeking parties are motivated to present policies that appeal to voters, whose bias toward these policies is based in part on reasons that have nothing to do with policy. He demonstrates that this strategic logic has profound implications for party competition and responsible party government. Adams's innovative fusion of research methodologies presents solutions to issues of policy stability and voter partisanship. His theory's supported by an in-depth analysis of empirical applications to party competition in Britain, France, and the United States in the postwar years. Party Competition and Responsible Party Government will appeal to readers interested in the study of political parties, voting behavior and elections, as well as to scholars specializing in French, British, and American politics. James Adams is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara.