Party Strategies in a Two-Party System

Abstract

In the last chapter it was argued that, as oligopolists, teams of candidates organised into parties will limit their form of competition with each other. In this chapter we consider a further argument about the restriction of party competition. If this argument were to prove valid then the proposal presented here for removing the first restriction — internally democratic parties — would be undermined. This second problem has been raised by Joseph A. Schlesinger. He contends that when parties come to be concerned with the distribution of benefits they will tend to restrict the size of their electoral coalition to that of a minimum winning coalition.¹ That is, they will not seek to maximise their total vote. Only if parties consist of loosely united individual candidates, motivated by a desire to maximise their political careers, will each candidate running for office under a party label seek to maximise his own vote. Against Schlesinger we argue that the calculations candidates will make regarding optimal strategies are more complex than he suggests. A priori there is no reason for believing that non-cohesive, non-programmatic parties will provide for more extensive competition than programmatic ones. The starting point in this discussion is what Schlesinger saw as the main limitation in the application of Down’s analysis to the United States: parties in America are not cohesive units.