caa a22 4500 475739620 CHVBK 20180406123456.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170329e20001201xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s100580000030 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s100580000030 Llavador Humberto G. Department of Economics, University of California, Davis, CA 95616-8578, USA (e-mail: humberto@ucdavis.edu), US aut Abstention and political competition [Elektronische Daten] [Humberto G. Llavador] Abstract.: The classical literature on spatial majority voting postulates that all citizens vote. The Median Voter Theorem (MVT) then obtains when parties have perfect information on voter behavior and are either office-seekers ("Downsian”) or ideological. This paper introduces abstention, a simple yet realistic modification. We show that the main features of the MVT survive to a large extent but subject to some qualifications. First, the winning policy does not bear any necessary relation to the median voter. Second, there exist examples in which the candidates choose different positions at equilibrium. Third, equilibrium may fail to exist or be unique. Finally, the equilibria of the model with office-motivated parties may differ from the ones where parties are ideological. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2000 JEL classification: D72 nationallicence Key words: Abstention, alienation, political competition, median voter theorem nationallicence https://doi.org/10.1007/s100580000030 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s100580000030 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Llavador Humberto G. Department of Economics, University of California, Davis, CA 95616-8578, USA (e-mail: humberto@ucdavis.edu), US aut Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer