This proposal seeks funding to develop a formal theory of parties as electoral institutions. The project begins by showing the consequences of treating political parties as collections of self-interested actors whose goals are sometime in conflict, rather than treating them as unitary actors who always have the same interests. The second part of the project focuses on issues in which voters (and candidates) have similar, strong interests. One way of conceiving those issues is that they are similar to core items that parties fold into their platforms. Both parts of hte project enable the invesitgators to answer questions about the positions that a party adopts over time as it tries to anticipate it's opposing party's position. The projects also enable the researchers to gain insights into which party members will be most loyal and whether party leaders can do anything to encourage party harmony.
