The Dynamics of Candidate Behavior in Britain

Over the past twenty years, British politics has witnessed dramatic policy convergence between the two dominant political parties, Labour and the Conservatives. An emerging literature documents a parallel convergence in the policy beliefs and the partisan loyalties of the British mass public. I investigate convergence at the candidate-level and attempt to determine the extent to which changes over time in the type and extremity of the candidates reflect the patterns of convergence found at other levels of analysis. Using data from the British Representation Study 1992-2005, I find evidence systematic variation in candidate behavior within parties and over time. My findings contribute to a growing body of literature pointing to often ignored variation at the candidate-level in Britain, which exists despite the constraint of party discipline