International Journal of Business and Economics Volume 5, No. 1 April​, 2006

On the Ideology Motive in Political Economy Models

Volker Grossmann

University of Fribourg, Switzerland CESifo, Germany and Institute for the Study of Labor, Germany

Abstract

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.

Keywords：ideological polarization, partisan constituency, political parties.

JEL Classifications：D72.

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