Investing in Agreement: Party Organization, Leadership Change, and Policy Positions

摘要: Party unity is a key feature of the political landscape. The degree observed an important element clarity and strength party positions, but critical question how preferences leaders backbenchers feed into common position largely unasked. We argue that intraparty organization both for positioning volatility those positions. Whether when who would like to change their party’s can gain influence put desires practice depends on whom structure process provide opportunities influence. In this paper, we model incentives rank-and-file members might nonetheless support leadership decisions. Contrary expectations generated by veto player theory, our signaling game suggests changes in policy content labels should be more frequent parties with complex structures (i.e., decision making). test empirically utilizing party-position data drawn from election manifestos.