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| Volume 5, No. 1,
April 2006 |
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On the Ideology Motive in
Political Economy Models |
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Volker Grossmann |
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University
of Fribourg, Switzerland
CESifo,
Germany
and
Institute
for the Study of Labor, Germany |
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| Abstract |
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This note provides a simple
political economy model which captures the trade-off of political
parties between catering to their "core" constituency and appealing
to middle-of-the-road voters, who are not intrinsically attached to
a party. The analysis reconciles seemingly ideology-motivated
behavior of political parties with vote-maximization. |
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Key words:
ideological polarization;
partisan constituency; political parties |
| JEL
classification:
D72 |
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