Political Competition with Endogenous Party Formation and Citizen Activists
研究内生政党形成如何影响政治纲领，模型显示两党竞争时纲领差异有限，而一党垄断可能使中间选民处境更差。
This paper studies the effects of endogenous party formation on political platforms. It develops a model in which parties allow like-minded citizens to, first, share the cost of running in a public election and, second, coordinate on a policy platform. The paper characterizes the set of political equilibria with two competing parties and with one uncontested party. In two-party equilibria, the distance between both platforms is always positive but limited, in contrast to the median voter model and the citizen candidate model. In one-party equilibria, the median voter can be worse off than in all equilibria with two competing parties.