Treating Parties as Uniform Actors: A Defense of the Concept From a Rational Choice Perspective

Abstract

This article proposes justification for modeling behavior of political parties as uniform actors, based on axioms of rational behavior. Analyses of political parties which spring from rational choice tradition have been neglecting the importance of intra-party politics, which is to say that parties have typically been modeled as uniform actors. In light of organizational changes within parties in recent years, this assumption is reexamined. This article assumes that party consists of many actors, and that expected utility of party's policy depends on a distance from ideal position of a voter on a dimension of politics in spatial representation. If this is the case, and if we accept assumptions of rational behavior, it is possible to deduce unique position of political party as a whole, and therefore unique expected utility of a party for a voter. This article suggests that, even if there are notable intra-party political differences, this is not a problem to model party behavior as if it were a uniform actor.