Stammwähler und die opportunistische Wahl parteipolitischer Programme

Christian W. Martin, Thomas Plümper*

*Corresponding author for this work

Publication: Scientific journalJournal articlepeer-review

Abstract

This article explains political radicalism by the number of voters who are biased towards a party. With little voters biased in favor of a party, this party has to rely more heavily on its programmatic distance to other parties. Because large parties – i.e.: parties with a high number of biased voters – gain votes when they move to the center of the political spectrum, parties with a lower number of voters that are biased in their favor are forced to the edges of the policy space. We draw on a computational model of political competition between four parties in a two-dimensional policy space to investigate this relationship. We use panel corrected OLS estimates to analyze the data generated by the computer simulation. Our results substantiate the hypothesis of a negative relationship between the number of biased voters and the inclination of a party to adopt a more extreme policy stance. 2004 The Swiss Political Science Review.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-31
Number of pages31
JournalSwiss Political Science Review
Volume10
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2004
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Computer simulation
  • Electoral bias
  • Endogenous partisan preferences
  • Multiparty competition
  • Stochastic equilibrium

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