Downsian Model of Party Competition - Essay Example

Downsian Model of Party Competition Introduction It is in agreement that the most common result in formal political theory isthat of two candidates competing in a scenario where the first person to win in an electoral contest should adopt the position taken by the median voter (Downs 25). This paper will use the Downsian model of party competition to explore party positioning in relation to full pre-commitment to announced platforms amongst two office-seeking candidates as well as examine the strengths and weaknesses of this model. It explores what platforms that political parties acting in the interests of their candidates best espouse in an instance where voters have single-peaked preferences in an undimensional policy space. With the knowledge of the distribution of the median voters and their ideal points, the two political parties in the Downsian model can choose where to place their platforms in the policy space as the platforms serves as the candidate’s default policy position. It is imperative to note that if the candidates do not adopt the preferred position of the median voter, then their political parties too will not together implement the median voter’s median ideal position, as the parties prefer to differentiate from each other in terms of ideologies. The closer the two parties are and their positions, the more intense the candidates will compete to win the elections with the parties trying to move away from each other to carve a space for their policy space in order to win the elections without much repositioning. This shows that in the Downsian model, while competition may drive the candidates together, it absolutely drives the political parties apart in political competitions. In most political contests and competitions, the strategies that the candidates choose in an election campaign and what they emphasize has got a direct bearing on the vote choices and the final outcome (Shepsle and Mark 2). The question that arises is why candidates choose to emphasize certain issues and ignore others during the campaigns. The classic spatial approach to party competition is based on the Downsian model that posits that parties maximize votes by adopting positions on the policies that they adopt and that the parties will gravitate towards the median voter in a system where there are two parties when the preferences are in a distributed format (Persson and Guido 12). There is also a corresponding ideology that voters will choose parties that are closer to their policy preferences are what they would like implemented as a matter of policy in the electoral contest. Downsian Model of Party Competition As already stated before, the Downsian model of party competition has got the assumption that parties formulate policies aimed at winning elections in that parties try to maximize their votes and that the median voter theorem applies. The median voter theorem referred to in the Downsian model of political contests holds that if all the policy preferences of the voters are peaked or looked at from a single dimension, then the most preferred point of the median voter is a point known as a Condorcet winner that all their preferences converge. This implies that there exists a policy that is preferred in comparison to another that it may be paired with that makes parties not want to propose another platform that may not be a winner in an election. Therefore the Downsian model of political competition in a scenario where there are two parties gives a Nash Equilibrium where the party platforms can only converge to the median voter showing that divergence is more common due to the polarization of most parties depending n the preferences of voters. However, there are two requirements that must be fulfilled for the Downsian model to work which include the existence of Condorcet and the competition among parties to reach it. This is because the existence of the Condorcet winner is necessary for the Downsian model of competitive politics to possess a predictive power in the electoral contest under discussion at any given point. Most research work in political economy has chosen to work with models in which the Condorcet winner is guaranteed that has shown success and wide application of the results in political economy while the application of the median voter theorem has equally been helpful in understanding the Downsian model. The Downsian model of party competition that involves the competition between two parties over a single issue predicts party convergence to the policy position based on that dimension as espoused by the median voter. This is especially so if the parties are motivated in seeking the office while the voters are influenced by their proximity to the positions of the candidate. According to the Downsian model of political competition, political parties converge around the median voter in an undimensional space with the rational parties eliminating the distances between each other, making it difficult for voters to make a choice between them on spatial grounds. The implication of this is that when policy distances between parties are unassertive, the choice of which party to vote for, as a voter will be determined based on the party to be trusted to deliver on the particular issue of concern in the eyes of the voter. The Downsian model of political competition therefore sees politics as an exchange that requires that consent of both the parties and the candidates and the policies are exchanged in specified but organized institutional setting. Crucially, it assumes that the parties can precommit to the platforms that they have announced, that parties are voting maximizers and have no preferences on the policies rather they are just about obtaining votes. In this aspect, once elected there is no incentive to deviate from the platform that has already been announced making the citizens or the voters believe that the platform will be eventually acted upon. Therefore upon the reasoning of the Downsian model rests the fundamental hypothesis that parties formulate policies, so that they win electoral contests rather than the reverse, which is, win the elections so that they formulate the policies after the victory. The theory explains the convergence of parties, the turnout of voters in elections, disinformation on public issues during political competitions. Downsian model is a comparison of a party system with two parties and assumes that moving towards the centre; parties cannot afford to lose their supporters who have extreme views in the electoral process. The Downsian model also has a proposition that if all the preferences of the citizens or the potential voters are peaked on a single dimension, then the median ideal preference will be the Condorcet winner and the social preference order under simple majority rule is transitive. This observation has been considered important in political science and economy in that it proposes that very strong restrictions on the distribution of preferences are required to guarantee an equilibrium that has multiple dimensions in terms of policies. However, the tension between the policy preferences and the incentive to win brings a challenge in understanding the phenomenon of electoral competition in elections. Nevertheless, with knowledge of the preference of the median voter, there is expectation to have a convergence towards the median voter’s preferred policies because parties easily win elections by being closer to the median voter rather than the opponents. This is what leads parties to target the median voter in their quest to win political contests or elections. In summary, the Downsian model assumes that there are only two political parties gunning for a single-round election for an office whereby an election chooses a single candidate. In this model, elections choose a single candidate and takes place within a single constituency decided by a plurality vote. According to the Downsian model, the policies are located along a single dimension either left or right and the candidate policy positions are well defined which can be accurately estimated by the voter. The eligible voters in this case look no further that the election that is to come after the impending one and expect to benefit in return for the contribution of their vote. The voters only care about which candidate or party that will enact policies that are close to their preferences without which they can support of either the candidates or parties. The parties and the candidates only care about winning by almost accurately estimating the policy preferences of the voters or at a minimum identify the location of the median voter and his preferences while the candidates in the Downsian model of political competition are part of a unified political party system. Strength of the Downsian Model of Political Competition The Downsian model is persuasive in that it explains why parties in a system with two parties tend to stay nearer the middle ground. This is true even when the historical origins and the most loyal supporters are distinct though the parties may not converge completely to the point of being difficult to distinguish in terms of policies and ideology. In the Downsian model of political competition where there is the two-party competition, the more ideologically concentrated a party is, it derives advantages because the party median may be closer to the overall median voter as compared to that of a dispersed party. Also, due to the fact that inter-mediating effects of party primaries coupled with the influence of party activists play a big role in the choice of candidates who are near the median; voters are likely to have a choice of candidates with divergent views. Therefore, a smaller party with an ideologically cohesive party is likely to have its candidate nearer the median of the voter as compared to a larger political party enabling it to win elections easily. Under the Downsian model, the turnout does not depend on the voting costs as compared to the expected benefits meaning that if the ideological distribution of the voters is bimodal and extremists abstain from the vote, the two party systems in the Downsian approach need not lead to a convergence. The upshot of this is that voters who seem to be alienated from politics due to the fact that no candidate is closer to their preferred policies positioning might choose to abstain that makes parties to adjust their policies towards the median voter. The Downsian model of political contests also derives its strength from the median voter where the two parties converge and corresponds to the most preferred position of the median voter. This position known as the Condorcet winner beats all other positions in the ideological spectrum; thus, a party situated at the position of the median voter cannot be defeated in the electoral contest no matter where other parties are located in the ideological spectrum. With this idea in mind, parties must seek to exploit this ideological position in order to win elections. Through the Downsian model, political parties have been able to strategize on how to win a two-party election by simply knowing the position of the median voter and avoiding other positions for fear of losing. This means that in a country made up of moderates, it is politically suicidal to move to the fringes in order to win voters who will not be easily be bought by your policies. Limits of the Downsian Model of Political Competition The Downsian model of political competition has a limitation in that the analysis obtained may not be accurate in the sense that the candidates are perfectly informed about the preferences of the voters or the fact that they are aware of the preferred policy of the meridian voter. The framework is also dimensionally limited to one-dimensional policy spaces and that political parties are exogenously given and candidates do not select for themselves. It also has a limitation in the sense that candidates can commit to applying their campaign promises and the platform offered by parties are non-ambiguous. An important limitation in the Downsian model is that in a sizable electorate, the returns from voting are usually at a reduced rate that even small costs of incurring the election costs may cause voters to abstain and this fact is reinforced by parties’ convergence. Therefore, if the probability to be an integral voter is low mostly occurring in large electorates, then even small voting costs will most probably induce abstention from the vote. The low probability of being an integral voter has a consequence on both the political participation and the desire to be informed about the political issues, thus reducing the benefit of information about the candidates and the policy platforms and preferences of the parties in the contest. This leads to rational abstention from the vote as well as rational ignorance on the political issues at hand in the political contest implying that the existence of a Condorcet winner is necessary to give the Downsian model the predictive power of politics. The median voter theorem widely used in the Downsian model of political competition has got a limitation in the sense that there exist many factors that will likely prevent a political process from reaching a point of efficiency (Krehbiel 113). The median voter theorem is impeded by the inability of the voter to directly change the laws that prevents this theory from being true or right as sometimes the policies being voted on may be complex to be placed within a one-dimensional continuum. Therefore, if voters are to consider more than one issue simultaneously, the median voter theorem will be inapplicable for example voters voting on spending in either healthcare or education simultaneously. The median voter theorem applicable in the Downsian model also encounters a problem in case there are incentives by the government structures which are usually informed by the notion that the decisions by people are usually motivated by self-interest. This means that most people in the government bureaucracy are not motivated to work for the public interest but the need to be re-elected that largely distorts the order that they receive from the voters (Downs 439–446). The result of this is that the persons in the government will vote for short-run policies that are meant to ensure that they are reelected into political offices (Holcombe 155). The implication of the above argument in relation to the Downsian model is that the assumption that a single election chooses a single candidate is not always applicable as at times there may be multiple elections for different offices, and voters may choose to balance policies across different elections. They may split the votes in order to bring into office candidates that are closer to their preferred policies notwithstanding their party affiliations. The implication of this is that if voters balance across the elections, non-median parties may get some support from to compete with other non-median parties. Conclusion In general, there are forces working towards achieving and hindering competition in an electoral contest. In this essay having focused on the Downsian model of political contests, it has been discussed that the policies that are framed by parties usually influence voting amongst by voters but not in all instances. Recent work by scholars have built on the ideas by Downs that have enabled the building of institution specific and voter preference-distribution-specific theory of party competitions. Through this, we can identify the factors that can have a predictable effect in fostering or hindering the convergence of parties. The question that needs to be further investigated is a scenario where there is a two party system, both parties have policy, and ideological preferences and what would occur in terms of convergence. Further, in probing whether all voters vote for the ideologically closest party, it should be evaluated whether this assumption is compatible with convergent equilibrium and the change that would occur if the turnout is less than one hundred per cent. The Downsian model only takes it in a situation with two parties and research should find out how the logic of party competition would change if additional parties are entered into the political contest. Part of the solution to the above propositions must appreciate the fact that a two-party democracy cannot be achieved efficiently unless there is a consensus on ideologies from a large mass of the populace and parties in the system change their platforms to resemble one another. If the distribution of the ideologies in the society is constant, there will be an equilibrium meaning that ideologies are stable over time. The implication of this is that it provides a conducive atmosphere for the launch of new parties due to the change in the distribution of the ideology of the voters. Works Cited Downs, Anthony. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper, 1957. Print. Downs, Anthony. "A Theory of Bureaucracy". American Economic Review 55: 1965. 439–446. Holcombe, Randall G. Public Sector Economics: The Role of Government in the American Economy. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Education, 2006. Print. Krehbiel, Keith. "Legislative Organization". Journal of Economic Perspectives 18: 2004. 113– 128. Persson, Torsten, and Guido E. Tabellini. Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2000. Print. Shepsle, Kenneth A, and Mark S. Bonchek. Analyzing Politics: Rationality, Behavior, and Institutions. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. 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