Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Marcin Dziubinski
Author-Name-First: Marcin
Author-Name-Last: Dziubinski
Author-Name: Jaideep Roy
Author-Name-First: Jaideep
Author-Name-Last: Roy
Title: Electoral Competition in 2-Dimensional Ideology
Space with Unidimensional Commitment
Abstract: 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 settings: a
homogeneous one, where both candidates are committed to the same dimension
and a heterogeneous one, where each candidate is committed to a different
dimension. We characterise and give necessary and suffcient conditions for
existence of convergent and divergent Nash equilibria for distributions with a
non-empty and an empty core. We identify a special point in the ideology
space which we call a strict median, existence of which is strictly related to
existence of divergent Nash equilibria. A central conclusion of our analysis is
that for divergent equilibria, strong extremism (or differentiation) seems to be
an important equilibrium feature.
Creation-Date: 2009
File-URL: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/media/lancaster-university/content-assets/documents/lums/economics/working-papers/ElectoralCompetition.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Number: 598693
Classification-JEL: 
Keywords: Spatial Voting, Two Issues, Uni-Dimensional Commitment, StrictMedian, Extremism
Handle: RePEc:lan:wpaper:598693