Endogenous Political Instability

Abstract

In this paper, we construct a simple dynamic two-party electoral competition model in which the degree of political instability is endogenously determined. We consider the campaign contributions as stock variable which is gradually accumulated by both partyfs direct investment and induced the Markov-perfect Nash equilibrium. We then examine the stability of the symmetric steady state and find that it may be either totally stable or unstable depending on the parameter values involved in the model. We also found that under certain conditions, at least near the symmetric steady state, there exists indeterminacy of equilibrium path: there exist both stable and unstable paths, that is, under given levels of political assets, both high instability political system and low instability political system can emerge depending on expectations of political parties.Political assets; Dynamic political economy; Differential game; Markovperfect Nash equilibrium; Two-party model