Question

HOW CAN WE DEAL WITH THE PROBLEMS OF POLITICAL OR ELECTORAL COMPETITION?WHAT ARE THE WAYS TO REMOVE THE DRAWBACKS OF ELECTORAL COMPETITION?

Answer 1

A Drawback of Electoral Competition
Alessandro Lizzeri
New York University and CEPRy
Nicola Persico
University of Pennsylvaniaz
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Abstract
In most major democracies there are very few parties compared to the
number of possible policy positions held by voters. We provide an e¢ ciency
rationale for why it might be appropriate to limit the proliferation of parties.
In our model, the larger is the number of parties, the greater the ine¢ ciency
Acknowledgments: We would like to thank two anonymous referees and Xavier Vives for
helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge Önancial support from the NSF under grants SBR
9911496 and 9905564, respectively. We are grateful to Johannes Horner, Antonio Merlo, Roger
Myerson, Wolfgang Pesendorfer, Michele Piccione, Chun Seng Yip, and especially Herve Roche.
yDepartment of Economics, 269 Mercer Street, New York