%0 Journal Article
%T Attract voters or appease activists? Opposition partiesĄŻ dilemma and party policy change
%A Florence So
%J Journal of Theoretical Politics
%@ 1460-3667
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0951629818756544
%X Why do mainstream opposition parties sometimes fail to adopt policy positions that are attractive to the wider electorate? In this paper, I construct a game-theoretic model between the party leader, the partyĄŻs MPs, and the party organization to illustrate how opposition partiesĄŻ platform adjustments depend on the party leaderĄŻs risk assessment of being deposed and MPsĄŻ re-election incentives. The model predicts that a party leader is most likely to adhere to the activistsĄŻ position when MPsĄŻ re-election probabilities depend greatly on activistsĄŻ campaign effort, and when MPsĄŻ benefits of re-election are high. Platform adjustments are only possible when the reverse is true. These results have important implications on electoral competitiveness and strategies of parties in majoritarian versus proportional electoral systems. Namely, I expect that opposition parties in majoritarian systems are less able to adjust their platforms than those in proportional systems
%K electoral systems
%K intraparty politics
%K MPsĄŻ re-elections
%K party leaders and party activists
%K platform adjustments
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0951629818756544