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ON THE ROLE OF THE PRIMARY SYSTEM IN CANDIDATE SELECTION
Author(s) -
OAK MANDAR P.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
economics and politics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1468-0343
pISSN - 0954-1985
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0343.2006.00167.x
Subject(s) - competition (biology) , perspective (graphical) , selection (genetic algorithm) , politics , primary (astronomy) , primary election , affect (linguistics) , economics , public economics , positive economics , political science , computer science , psychology , general election , law , ecology , astronomy , artificial intelligence , biology , physics , communication
How does the type of the primary system affect political outcomes? We address this issue by constructing a simple model that accounts for intra‐party as well as inter‐party political competition. Our model suggests that allowing non‐partisan voters to participate in the primaries (i.e. a semi‐open primary system ) indeed improves the chances of a moderate candidate getting elected. However, this need not necessarily happen in the case of a completely open primary system . Under such a system there arise multiple equilibria, some of which may lead to a greater degree of extremism than the closed primary system . Thus, our model contributes to the current debate on the choice of primary systems from an analytical perspective and helps explain some of the empirical findings.