POSC150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Party System, Nash Equilibrium, Glasser'S Choice Theory
1 Jun 2018
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November 30, 2017 Class Notes
American Political Parties
I.Rational Choice Theory
II.What is a political party?
III.Why parties?
● Thomas Jefferson was co-founder of the first modern popular party
I.Rational Choice
● John Aldrich, Why Parties?
○ A rational choice perspective
● Rational choice theory
○ Individuals behave rationally
○ Individuals have preferences over choices
○ Aggregate outcomes are determined by rational decision makers applying
preferences
II.What is a political party?
● American parties
○ Parties can only be understood in historical context: path dependence
○ Party eras
● Parties are endogenous
○ Created and maintained not by statute but by ambitious politicians
● Who are party members?
○ Critical actors:
■ Office seekers and office holders
○ Secondary actors:
■ Activists who hold or have access to critical resources (money, info,
expertise, time, labor) and rely on the party’s success to reach goals
○ Voters are not part of the party
○ Voters are targets-they consumer what the parties create (candidates, platforms,
policies) in exchange for votes
■ Critical part in allowing the party to reach a victory
■ Not a formal part of the party
III.Why Parties?
Why do politicians create and recreate parties?
● It is in their interest to do so
Why form political parties in the first place?
● To solve collective action problems within the government
○ The prisoner’s dilemma-confess
○ John Nash, 1994 Nobel Prize in economics
Document Summary
Thomas jefferson was co-founder of the first modern popular party. Aggregate outcomes are determined by rational decision makers applying preferences. Parties can only be understood in historical context: path dependence. Created and maintained not by statute but by ambitious politicians. Activists who hold or have access to critical resources (money, info, expertise, time, labor) and rely on the party"s success to reach goals. Voters are not part of the party. Voters are targets-they consumer what the parties create (candidates, platforms, policies) in exchange for votes. Critical part in allowing the party to reach a victory. Not a formal part of the party. It is in their interest to do so. To solve collective action problems within the government. John nash, 1994 nobel prize in economics. The equilibrium is the cell where both players would prefer to play. This is a nash equilibrium because neither player would move from the equilibrium if given the chance.
