Opportunist politicians and the evolution of
electoral competition

Jean-François Laslier (1) , Bilge Ozturck (2)

1 PREG-CRG - Pole de recherche en économie et gestion
2 Department of Economics

We study a unidimensional model of spatial competition between two parties with two types of politicians. The office oriented politicians, referred to as “opportunist” politicians, care only about the spoils of the office. The policy oriented politicians, referred to as “militant” politicians have ideological preferences on the policy space. In this framework, we compare a winner-take-all system, where all the spoils go to the winner, to a proportional system, where the spoils of office are split among the two parties proportionally to their share of the vote.
We study the existence of short term political equilibria and then, within an evolutionary setup, the dynamics and stability of policies and of party membership decisions.

Mots clés: Political competition. Opportunism. Downs.; Political competition. Opportunism. Downs

Domaines: Economies et finances; Science politique

Jean-François Laslier, Bilge Ozturck. Opportunist politicians and the evolution of
electoral competition. 2006. ⟨halshs-00121748⟩