Campaigning internally or externally
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Campaigning internally or externally Shyh-Fang Ueng1 Accepted: 25 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This paper uses a forward-looking two-period coalitional game to analyze party prominent figures’ internal competition for personal power in the party and external cooperation on national elections for the party. Incorporating the electorate’s preference for new alternatives over the establishment, it characterizes the equilibrium of prominent figures’ (1) maneuver for personal power in the party; (2) grouping to form factions in the party or split-off new parties; (3) campaign effort in the national election for the party; and (4) the resulting outcomes of the national election. It shows that the electorate’s longing for new alternatives induces prominent figures to maneuver more in the party; form a new party instead of a faction; and campaign harder for the national election. This study synthesizes the analysis of internal party politics and inter-party competition. Keywords Internal maneuver · Personal power · Factions · Split-off parties · Campaign effort · The national election JEL Classification D78 · D71
1 Introduction Factions for interests in political parties are well documented (See e.g. Bettcher 2005; Crutzen et al. 2010; Huang 2000; Mershon 1996; Persico et al. 2011). They persistently rival each other in everlasting dominant political parties. This phenomenon is prevalent across countries with different political institutions. It is especially acute in Botswana, China, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and Taiwan, among others. Factional competition often attracts intense public attention
The author is grateful for referees and editors for reading each version of the paper with fresh and rigorous eyes. Their comments help generate a much better paper. One of the referees’ insightful and detailed suggestions are especially helpful. This paper also greatly benefits from the discussions of Xiao Luo, Eric Maskin, and Guoqiang Tian along various stages of its development. Equally sincerely, hope this paper provides an answer to Jin-See Wong’s question: “Why does a political party often not nominate the most intelligent and public-minded member as its candidate for national elections?”.
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Shyh-Fang Ueng [email protected]; [email protected] Department of Economics, National Chung-Cheng University, P.O. Box 34-174, Min-Hsiung, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan
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Annals of Operations Research
because the future political trend of a country depends on which faction wins the competition and gets to lead the country. Interest factions are formed to strengthen members’ collective power in the party through synergy effect of grouping. However, factional rivalry is costly for individual factions and damaging to party cohesion. Would factional members campaign for party candidates from rival factions? Would a party fractured by factions become less competitive in national elections than unified parties? Moreover, from time to time, politicians denied candidacy for nationa
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