Multiparty competition in Israel, 1988-96

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 635-663

  Schofield, Norman ^a   Sened, Itai ^a  

^a WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 19944419324     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123405000335     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. John Duggan, 'Equilibrium Equivalence under Expected Plurality and Probability of Winning Maximization' (unpublished, University of Rochester, 2000).
2. Randall L. Calvert, 'Robustness of the Multidimensional Voting Model: Candidates, Motivations, Uncertainty and Convergence', American Journal of Political Science, 29 (1985), 69-85;
3. Jeffrey Banks, John Duggan and Michel Le Breton, 'Bounds for Mixed Strategy Equilibria and the Spatial Model of Elections', Journal of Economic Theory, 103 (2002), 88-105.
4. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: Wiley 1954);
5. David Robertson, A Theory of Party Competition (London: Wiley, 1976);
6. Hans Daalder, 'In Search of the Center of European Party Systems', American Political Science Review, 78 (1984), 92-109;
7. Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, 'U.S. Presidential Elections 1968-1980: A Spatial Analysis', American Journal of Political Science, 28 (1984), 283-312;
8. Ian Budge, David Robertson and Derek Hearl, Ideology, Strategy and Party Change: Spatial Analyses of Post War Election Programmes in 19 Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987);
9. Gary Cox, 'Centripetal and Centrifugal Incentives in Electoral Systems', American Journal of Political Science, 34 (1990), 903-35;
10. Gary Cox, Making Votes Count (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
11. George Rabinowitz, Stuart Macdonald and Ola Listhaug, 'New Players in an Old Game: Party Strategy in Multiparty Systems', Comparative Political Studies, 24 (1991), 147-85;
12. James Adams and Samuel Merrill III, 'Modeling Party Strategies and Policy Representation in Multiparty Elections: Why are Strategies so Extreme?' American Journal of Political Science, 43 (1999), 765-91.
13. John Aldrich, 'A Spatial Model with Party Activists: Implications for Electoral Dynamics', Public Choice, 41 (1983), 63-100;
14. John Aldrich, 'A Downsian Spatial Model with Party Activists', American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), 974-90;
15. John Aldrich, Why Parties? (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995);
16. John Aldrich and Michael McGinnis, 'A Model of Party Constraints on Optimal Candidate Positions', Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 12 (1989), 437-50.
17. James Adams, Party Competition and Responsible Party Government (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001);
18. Samuel Merrill III and Bernard Grofman, A Unified Theory of Voting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
19. Samuel Merrill III, Bernard Grofman and Scott Feld, 'Nash Equilibrium Strategies in Directional Models of Two-Candidate Spatial Competition', Public Choice, 98 (1999), 369-83.
20. Michael Alvarez, Jonathan Nagler and Shaun Bowler, 'Issues, Economics, and the Dynamics of Multiparty Elections: The British 1987 General Election', American Political Science Review, 94 (2000), 131-50;
21. Michael Alvarez, Jonathan Nagler and Jennifer Willette, 'Measuring the Relative Impact of Issues and the Economy in Democratic Elections', Electoral Studies, 19 (2000), 237-53.
22. Donald Stokes, 'Spatial Models and Party Competition', American Political Science Review, 57 (1963), 368-77;
23. Donald Stokes, 'Valence Politics', in Dennis Kavanagh, ed., Electoral Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) pp. 141-62;
24. Timothy Groseclose, 'A Model of Candidate Location When One Candidate Has a Valance Advantage', American Journal of Political Science, 45 (2001), 862-86;
25. Enriqueta Aragones and Thomas Palfrey, 'Mixed Equilibrium in a Downsian Model with a Favored Candidate', Journal of Economic Theory, 103 (2002), 131-61;
26. Enriqueta Aragones and Thomas Palfrey, 'Electoral Competition Between Two Candidates of Different Quality: The Effects of Candidate Ideology and Private Information', in David Austen-Smith and John Duggan, eds, Social Choice and Strategic Decisions (Heidelberg: Springer, 2005), pp. 93-112.
27. James Adams and Samuel Merrill III, 'Spatial Models of Candidate Competition in the 1988 French Presidential Election: Are Presidential Candidates Vote Maximizers?' Journal of Politics, 62 (2000), 729-56.
28. Alvarez, Nagler and Willette, 'Measuring the Relative Impact';
29. see also Michael Alvarez and Garrett Glasgow, 'Voting Behavior and the Electoral Context of Government Formation',
30. and Michael Alvarez and Garrett Glasgow, 'Modeling voter support in the 1989 and 1994 Dutch Elections' (unpublished, University of California at Santa Barbara).
31. See also Kevin Quinn and Andrew Martin, 'An Integrated Computational Model of Multiparty Electoral Competition', Statistical Sciences, 17 (2002), 405-19.
32. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957).
33. See, for example, Stephen Ansolabehere and James Snyder, 'Valence Politics and Equilibrium in Spatial Election Models', Public Choice, 103 (2000), 327-36.
34. Poole and Rosenthal, 'U.S. Presidential Elections';
35. Kevin Quinn, Andrew Martin and Andrew Whitford, 'Voter Choice in Multiparty Democracies', American Journal of Political Science, 43 (1999), 1231-47.
36. Mel vin Hinich, 'Equilibrium in Spatial Voting; The Median Voter Result is an Artifact', Journal of Economic Theory, 16 (1977), 208-19.
37. Peter Coughlin, Probabilistic Voting Theory (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1992);
38. James Enelow and Melvin Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
39. See Tse Min Lin, James Enelow and Han Dorussen, 'Equilibrium in Multicandidate Probabilistic Spatial Voting', Public Choice, 98 (1999), 59-82;
40. James Adams, 'Multiparty Spatial Competition with Probabilistic Voting', Public Choice, 99 (1999), 259-74;
41. James Adams, 'Policy Divergence in Multicandidate Probabilistic Spatial Voting', Public Choice, 100 (1999), 103-22.
42. The derivation of this result depends on differentiating the vote share functions, to obtain the first order conditions. It is generally assumed that voters have 'quadratic loss functions', and it is this assumption that gives the mean voter location. If voters have linear loss functions, then a 'median voter location' satisfies the first order condition. Our focus is not on the mean voter result per se but on the validity of the argument that convergence is rational for parties.
43. We thank Asher Arian and Michal Shamir for allowing us to make an extensive use of their original data, reported, analysed and extensively discussed in Asher Arian and Michael Shamir, The Election in Israel: 1988 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990);
44. The Election in Israel: 1992 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995);
45. The Election in Israel: 1996 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999).
46. Earlier analyses of these data are reported in Norman Schofield, Itai Sened and David Nixon, 'Nash Equilibrium in Multiparty competition with "Stochastic" Voters', Annals of Operations Research, 84 (1998), 3-27;
47. and Dganit Ofek, Kevin Quinn and Itai Sened, 'Voters, Parties and Coalition formation in Israel: Theory and Evidence' (unpublished, Washington University in Saint Louis, 1998).
48. See Quinn, Martin and Whitford, 'Voter Choice in Multiparty Democracies', for a discussion of this technique.
49. See Samuel Merrill and James Adams, 'Computing Nash Equilibria in Probabilistic, Multiparty Spatial Models with Non Policy Components', Political Analysis, 9 (2001), 347-61, for an efficient algorithm for such hill climbing.
50. Jeffrey Banks and John Duggan, 'The Theory of Probabilistic Voting in the Spatial Model of Elections: The Theory of Office-Motivated Candidates', in Austen-Smith and Duggan, eds, Social Choice and Strategic Decisions, pp. 1-41.
51. Norman Schofield and Robert Parks, 'Nash Equilibrium in a Spatial Model of Coalition Bargaining', Mathematical Social Sciences, 39 (2000), 133-74.
52. See, e.g., Groseclose. 'A Model of Candidate Location When One Candidate Has a Valence Advantage'.
53. Norman Schofield and Itai Sened, 'Local Nash Equilibrium in Multiparty Politics', Annals of Operations Research, 109 (2002), 193-210.
54. Michael Laver and Norman Schofield, Multiparty Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), reprinted (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).
55. Schofield and Sened, 'Local Nash Equilibrium'.
56. As suggested by Aldrich, 'A Spatial Model with Party Activists' and 'A Downsian Spatial Model with Party Activists',
57. and more recently by Gary Miller and Norman Schofield, 'Activists and Partisan Realignment', American Political Science Review, 97 (2003), 245-60.
58. Poole and Rosenthal, 'U.S. Presidential Elections'.
59. Siddhartha Chib and Edward Greenberg, 'Markov Chain Monte Carlo Simulation Methods in Econometrics', Econometric Theory, 12 (1996), 409-31.
60. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler, 'When Politics and Models Collide: Estimating Models of Multi-candidate Elections', American Journal of Political Science, 42 (1998), 55-96.
61. Quinn, Martin and Whitford, 'Voter Choice in Multiparty Democracies'.
62. Quinn and Martin, 'An Integrated Computational Model of Multiparty Electoral Competition'.
63. Alvarez, Nagler and Bowler, 'Issues, Economics, and the Dynamics of Multiparty Elections'.
64. Poole and Rosenthal, 'U.S. Presidential Elections 1968-1980'.
65. Poole and Rosenthal, 'U.S. Presidential Elections 1968-1980', p. 287.
66. As previously argued by Hinich, in 'Equilibrium in Spatial Voting'.
67. Arian and Shamir, The Election in Israel: 1992;
68. Arian and Shamir, The Election in Israel: 1996. Notice that the scale of the figures is indeterminate. However, we can fix the scale by a normalization procedure. This is done by fixing the variance of the errors. We comment further on this below.
69. Two techniques have been used in the past to determine party locations. Ian Budge and his co-authors have used content analysis of party manifestos, while Michael Laver uses expert opinion. See Budge et al., Ideology, Strategy and Party Change;
70. Ian Budge et al., Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors and Governments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
71. and Michael Laver, ed., Estimating the Policy Position of Political Actors (London: Routledge, 2001). We combined these two approaches by using experts on Israeli politics to examine the party manifestos on the basis of the electoral questionnaire.
72. Of course, in our analysis we cannot distinguish between judgements about the capability of the leader or the capability of the party elite. We focus on the party leader because there is a well-attested relationship between electoral evaluation of leaders and election outcomes. See Anthony King, ed., Leaders' Personalities and the Outcomes of Democratic Elections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002);
73. and Harold Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne Stewart and Paul Whiteley, Political Choice in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
74. See Quinn, Martin and Whitford, 'Voter Choice in Multiparty Democracies',
75. as well as Robert Kass and Adrian Raftery, 'Bayes Factors', Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90 (1995), 773-95, for a justification of this method.
76. This is a standard assumption in such simulation exercises. For example, see Quinn and Martin, 'An Integrated Computational Model'.
77. See Merrill and Adams, 'Computing Nash Equilibria'.
78. Schofield and Sened, 'Local Nash Equilibrium in Multiparty Polities'.
79. The assertion that the MNL model satisfies the conditions of the 'mean voter theorem' can be found in Adams, Party Competition.
80. A numerical example suggesting otherwise has been offered by Jeremy Staum, 'Ideological Platforms and Probabilistic Voting Equilibria' (unpublished, Cornell University, 2001).
81. Hinich, 'Equilibrium in Spatial Voting';
82. Enelow and Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting;
83. Coughlin, Probabilistic Voting Theory,
84. Lin et al., 'Equilibrium in Multicandidate Probabilistic Spatial Voting'.
85. Banks and Duggan, 'The Theory of Probabilistic Voting'.
86. Hinich, 'Equilibrium in Spatial Voting';
87. Enelow and Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting;
88. Coughlin, Probabilistic Voting Theory;
89. Lin et al., 'Equilibrium in Multicandidate Probabilistic Spatial Voting'.
90. See Lin et al., 'Equilibrium in Multicandidate Probabilistic Spatial Voting' ;
91. and James Adams, 'Multiparty Spatial Competition with Probabilistic Voting", Public Choice, 99 (1999), 259-74;
92. James Adams, 'Policy Divergence in Multicandidate Probabilistic Spatial Voting', Public Choice, 100 (1999), 103-22.
93. For the proof of the theorem, see Norman Schofield, 'Equilibrium in the Spatial "Valence" Model of Politics', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 16 (2004), 447-81;
94. and Norman Schofield, 'Local Political Equilibria', in Austen-Smith and Duggan, eds, Social Choice and Strategic Decisions, pp. 57-91.
95. Lin et al., 'Equilibrium in Multicandidate Probabilistic Spatial Voting'.
96. Banks and Duggan, 'The Theory of Probabilistic Voting in the Spatial Model of Elections'.
97. For the general model with multivariate normal errors, it is necessary to modify the expression in Equation 7 and use the average of the covariances of the error differences. See Norman Schofield, 'Social Choice and Elections', forthcoming in James Alt, John Aldrich and Arthur Lupia, eds, A Positive Change in Political Science (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).
98. Norman Schofield, 'Valence Competition in the Spatial Stochastic Model', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 15 (2003), 371-83.
99. See also Miller and Schofield, 'Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States'.
100. Schofield and Sened, 'Local Nash Equilibria';
101. and Itai Sened, 'A Model of Coalition Formation: Theory and Evidence', Journal of Politics, 58 (1996), 350-72.
102. This technique has been used to study the Netherlands, Britain and Italy. See Norman Schofield and Itai Sened, 'Modelling the Interaction of Parties, Activists and Voters: Why is the Political Centre so Empty?' European Journal of Political Research, 16 (2004), 483-515;
103. Daniella Giannnetti and Itai Sened, 'Party Competition and Coalition Formation: Italy 1994-1996', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 44 (2005), 355-90.
104. See also Norman Schofield and Itai Sened, Multiparty Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).