This paper analyzes factors that affect candidates’ position-taking incentives in multi-candidate and multi-party elections. Following Cox (1990), we define centrifugal incentives as those that motivate vote-seeking candidates to take more extreme positions relative to the center of the...

The standard Downsian spatial model cannot account for two, related, aspects of party behavior in multiparty systems: (1) despite spatial modelers' disequilibrium results, parties' policy programs are relatively stable; (2) parties behave `responsibly,' consistently locating near their own...