This paper studies the effect of electoral rule disproportionality and the effect of the number of competing parties on the degree of platform polarization by the means of a unidimensional spatial model with policy motivated parties. We show that platform polarization is decreasing in the level...

The Brexit vote took place three days before the June 26, 2016, Spain's parliamentary elections, in which anti-systemic parties performed worse compared to the previous elections (December 2015) despite the optimistic predictions of the pre-election polls and the surge in the support for...

We study parties' optimal ideological cohesion across electoral rules, when the following trade-off is present: A more heterogenous set of candidates is electorally appealing (catch-all party), yet, it serves policy-related goals less efficiently. When the rule becomes more disproportional, thus...