Party platforms in electoral competition with heterogeneous constituencies
研究政党如何通过差异化纲领来减少选举竞争。两党在一维政策空间选择立场，候选人在不同选区竞争，因偏离政党纲领成本高，政党为保护候选人利益而分化，形成各自优势选区。
This paper shows how political parties differentiate to reduce electoral competition. Two parties choose platforms in a unidimensional policy space, and then candidates from these parties compete for votes in a continuum of constituencies with different median voters. Departing from their parties ’ platforms is costly enough that candidates do not take the median voter’s preferred position in every constituency. Because the candidate whose party is located closer to the median voter gets a higher expected payoff, parties acting in their candidates ’ best interests differentiate—when one party locates right of center, the other prefers to locate strictly left of center to carve out a “home turf, ” constituencies that can be won with little to no deviation from the platform of the candidate’s party. Hence, competition that pulls candidates together pushes parties apart. Decreasing “campaign costs ” increases party differentiation as the leftist party must move further from the rightist party to carve out its home turf, as does increasing heterogeneity across constituencies.