Political Competition

John E. Roemer is Elizabeth S. and A. Varick Stout Professor of Political Science and Economics at Yale University.

Roemer characterizes—correctly—the traditional Downsian model of political competition as one modeling competition between ‘opportunistic politicians’ who themselves have no policy preferences and who choose instead to adopt positions that appeal to the preferences of the optimum number of voters. This, he says, is a misguided model, easy to use but empirically and theoretically inaccurate and producing meaningless results. He offers instead a more complex model…based on ‘parties in conflict,’ which have real policy preferences. Well written… [A] fine contribution to the literature on spatial modeling.

• Preface Introduction 1. Political Competition over a Single Issue: The Case of Certainty 1.1 Citizens, Voters, and Parties 1.2 The Downs Model 1.3 The Wittman Model 1.4 Conclusion 2. Modeling Party Uncertainty 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The State-Space Approach to Uncertainty 2.3 An Error-Distribution Model of Uncertainty 2.4 A Finite-Type Model 2.5 Conclusion 3. Unidimensional Policy Spaces with Uncertainty 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The Downs Model 3.3 The Wittman Model: An Example 3.4 Existence of Wittman Equilibrium 3.5 Properties of Wittman Equilibrium 3.6 Summary 4. Applications of the Wittman Model 4.1 Simple Models of Redistribution: The Politics of Extremism 4.2 Politico-Economic Equilibrium with Labor-Supply Elasticity 4.3 Partisan Dogmatism and Political Extremism 4.4 A Dynamic Model of Political Cycles 4.5 Conclusion 5. Endogenous Parties: The Unidimensional Case 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Average-Member Nash Equilibrium 5.3 Condorcet-Nash Equilibrium 5.4 Conclusion 6. Political Competition over Several Issues: The Case of Certainty 6.1 Introduction 6.2 The Downs Model 6.3 The Wittman Model 6.4 Conclusion 7. Multidimensional Issue Spaces and Uncertainty: The Downs Model 7.1 Introduction 7.2 The State-Space and Error-Distribution Models of Uncertainty 7.3 The Coughlin Model 7.4 The Lindbeck-Weibull Model 7.5 Adapting the Coughlin Model to the Case of Aggregate Uncertainty 7.6 Conclusion 8. Party Factions and Nash Equilibrium 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Party Factions 8.3 PUNE as a Bargaining Equilibrium 8.4 A Differential Characterization of PUNE 8.5 Regular Wittman Equilibrium 8.6 PUNEs in the Unidimensional Model 8.7 PUNEs in a Multidimensional Euclidean Model 8.8 Conclusion 9. The Democratic Political Economy of Progressive Taxation 9.1 Introduction 9.2 The Model 9.3 The Equilibrium Concepts 9.4 Analysis of Party Competition 9.5 Calibration 9.6 Conclusion 10. Why the Poor Do Not Expropriate the Rich in Democracies 10.1 The Historical Issue and a Model Preview 10.2 The Politico-Economic Environment 10.3 Analysis of PUNEs 10.4 Empirical Tests 10.5 Proofs of Theorems 10.6 Concluding Remark 11. Distributive Class Politics and the Political Geography of Interwar Europe 11.1 Introduction 11.2 The Luebbert Model 11.3 Testing Luebbert's Theory 11.4 Introducing the Communists: A Three-Party Model 11.5 Conclusion 11.6 Methodological Coda Appendix 11A 12. A Three-Class Model of American Politics 12.1 Introduction 12.2 The Model 12.3 Characterization of PUNEs 12.4 Results 12.5 Conclusion 13. Endogenous Parties with Multidimensional Competition 13.1 Introduction 13.2 Endogenous Parties 13.3 Taxation and Race 13.4 Fitting the Model to U.S. Data 13.5 Quadratic Taxation 13.6 Private Financing of Parties 13.7 A Technical Remark on the Existence of PUNEs 13.8 Conclusion 13.9 Why the Poor Do Not Expropriate the Rich: Reprise 14. Toward a Model of Coalition Government 14.1 Introduction 14.2 The Payoff Function of a Wittman Party 14.3 An Example of Coalition Government: Unidimensional Wittman Equilibrium 14.4 Multidimensional Three-Party Politics 14.5 Coalition Government with a Multidimensional Issue Space: An Example 14.6 Conclusion Mathematical Appendix A.1 Basics of Probability Theory A.2 Some Concepts from Analysis References Index