We study a dynamic game of incomplete information in which two political parties contest elections with endogenously formed reputations regarding the preferences that prevail within each party. Party preferences exhibit serial correlation and change with higher probability following defeat in...

We propose a general model of repeated elections. In each period, a challenger is chosen from the electorate to run against an incumbent politician in a majority-rule election, and the winner then selects a policy from a multidimensional policy space. Individual policy preferences are private...

Electoral platform convergence is perceived unfavorably by both the popular press and many academic scholars. This paper provides a formal account of these perceived negative effects. We show that when parties do not know voters’ preferences perfectly, voters prefer some platform divergence to...

We derive necessary and sufficient conditions in order for a finite number of binary voting choices to be consistent with the hypothesis that voters have preferences that admit concave utility representations. When the location of the voting alternatives is known, we apply these conditions in...

We specify and compute equilibria of a dynamic policy-making game between a president and a legislature under insitutional rules that emulate those of the US Constitution. Policies are assumed to lie in a two-dimensional space in which one issue dimension captures systemic differences in...

We consider a general plurality voting game with multiple candidates, where voter preferences over candidates are exogenously given. In particular, we allow for arbitrary voter indierences, as may arise in voting subgames of citizen-candidate or locational models of elections. We prove that the...

This paper analyzes the traditional unidimensional, two-party electoral competition game when parties have mixed motivations, in the sense that they are interested in winning the election, but also in the policy implemented after the contest. In spite of having discontinuous payoffs, this game,...

This paper analyzes collective choices in a society with strategic voters and single-crossing preferences. It shows that, in addition to single-peakedness, single-crossingness is another meaningful domain which guarantees the existence of non-manipulable social choice functions. A social choice...

We analyze a stochastic bargaining game in which a new dollar is divided among committee members in each of an infinity of periods. In each period, a committee member is recognized and offers a proposal for the division of the dollar. The proposal is implemented if it is approved by a majority....

We prove existence of stationary Markov perfect equilibria in an infinite-horizon model of legislative policy making in which the policy outcome in one period determines the status quo in the next. We allow for a multidimensional policy space and arbitrary smooth stage utilities. We prove that...