Political competition : theory and applications

In this book, John Roemer presents a unified and rigorous theory of political competition between parties. 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. He examines all eight possible combinations of these choice assumptions, and characterizes their equilibria.

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Choice Review

Roemer (Yale Univ.) characterizes--correctly--the traditional Downsian model of political competition as one modeling competition between "opportunistic politicians" who themselves have no policy preferences and who choose instead to adopt positions that appeal to the preferences of the optimum number of voters. This, he says, is a misguided model, easy to use but empirically and theoretically inaccurate and producing meaningless results. He offers instead a more complex model axiomatically based on "parties in conflict," which have real policy preferences. In doing so, he develops the concept of the "Party-Unity Nash Equilibrium" (PUNE), the outcome of tri-factional intraparty competition along multiple policy dimensions. The book is well written but uses the professional language of formal theorists and linear algebra, and some advanced calculus is necessary to understand the mathematics of the model. Yet understanding the model in such great detail is not necessary to understand the point and the various applications of the model (such as explaining the existence of progressive income taxes in all democracies). All in all, this fine contribution to the literature on spatial modeling is recommended for graduate and research collections. M. Berheide Berea College

Preface

Introduction

1 Political Competition over a Single Issue: The Case of Certainty

1.1 Citizens, Voters, and Parties

1.2 The Downs Model

1.3 The Wittman Model

1.4 Conclusion

2 Modeling Party Uncertainty

2.1 Introduction

2.2 The State-Space Approach to Uncertainty

2.3 An Error-Distribution Model of Uncertainty

2.4 A Finite-Type Model

2.5 Conclusion

3 Unidimensional Policy Spaces with Uncertainty

3.1 Introduction

3.2 The Downs Model

3.3 The Wittman Model: An Example

3.4 Existence of Wittman Equilibrium

3.5 Properties of Wittman Equilibrium

3.6 Summary

4 Applications of the Wittman Model

4.1 Simple Models of Redistribution: The Politics of Extremism

4.2 Politico-Economic Equilibrium with Labor-Supply Elasticity

4.3 Partisan Dogmatism and Political Extremism

4.4 A Dynamic Model of Political Cycles

4.5 Conclusion

5 Endogenous Parties: The Unidimensional Case

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Average-Member Nash Equilibrium

5.3 Condorcet-Nash Equilibrium

5.4 Conclusion

6 Political Competition over Several Issues: The Case of Certainty

6.1 Introduction

6.2 The Downs Model

6.3 The Wittman Model

6.4 Conclusion

7 Multidimensional Issue Spaces and Uncertainty: The Downs Model

7.1 Introduction

7.2 The State-Space and Error-Distribution Models of Uncertainty

7.3 The Coughlin Model

7.4 The Lindbeck-Weibull Model

7.5 Adapting the Coughlin Model to the Case of Aggregate Uncertainty

7.6 Conclusion

8 Party Factions and Nash Equilibrium

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Party Factions

8.3 PUNE as a Bargaining Equilibrium

8.4 A Differential Characterization of PUNE

8.5 Regular Wittman Equilibrium

8.6 PUNEs in the Unidimensional Model

8.7 PUNEs in a Multidimensional Euclidean Model

8.8 Conclusion

9 The Democratic Political Economy of Progressive Taxation

9.1 Introduction

9.2 The Model

9.3 The Equilibrium Concepts

9.4 Analysis of Party Competition

9.5 Calibration

9.6 Conclusion

10 Why the Poor Do Not Expropriate the Rich in Democracies

10.1 The Historical Issue and a Model Preview

10.2 The Politico-Economic Environment

10.3 Analysis of PUNEs

10.4 Empirical Tests

10.5 Proofs of Theorems

10.6 Concluding Remark

11 Distributive Class Politics and the Political Geography of Interwar

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