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Political Parties and Electoral Landscapes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1998

KEN KOLLMAN ,
JOHN H. MILLER  and
SCOTT E. PAGE
KEN KOLLMAN
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
JOHN H. MILLER
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
SCOTT E. PAGE
Affiliation:
Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology
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Abstract

We study the relationship between voters' preferences and the emergence of party platforms in two-party democratic elections with adaptive parties. In the model, preferences of voters and the opposition party's platform determine an electoral landscape on which the challenging party must adaptively search for votes. We show that changes in the underlying distribution of voters' preferences result in different electoral landscapes which can be characterized by a measure of ruggedness. We find that locally adapting parties converge to moderate platforms regardless of the landscape's ruggedness. Greater ruggedness, however, tempers a party's ability to find such platforms. Thus, we are able to establish a link between the distribution of voters' preferences and the responsiveness of adaptive parties.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , January 1998 , pp. 139 - 158
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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