Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
4-2003
Abstract
Most existing theoretical work on party competition pays little attention to the evolution of party systems between elections as a result of defections between parties. In this article, we treat individual legislators as utility-maximizing agents tempted to defect to other parties if this would increase their expected payoffs. We model the evolution of party systems between elections in these terms and discuss this analytically, exploring unanswered questions using computational methods. Under office-seeking motivational assumptions, our results strikingly highlight the role of the largest party, especially when it is “dominant” in the technical sense, as a pole of attraction in interelectoral evolution.
Discipline
American Politics | Political Science
Research Areas
Political Science
Publication
American Journal of Political Science
Volume
47
Issue
2
First Page
215
Last Page
233
ISSN
0092-5853
Identifier
10.1111/1540-5907.00015
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
LAVER, Michael, & BENOIT, Kenneth.(2003). The evolution of party systems between elections. American Journal of Political Science, 47(2), 215-233.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4004
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-5907.00015