Downsian competition with assembly democracy

Abstract

This chapter studies a scenario of political competition between two parties, a traditional downsian party and a party implementing assembly democracy. The latter party celebrates a pre-electoral assembly and a post-electoral assembly open to all who wish to take part in which citizens are invited to launch proposals and vote over them. The multiple proposals at the assembly generates a lottery over some policies which is evaluated by voters against the single policy proposed by the traditional party. We show that extremist assembly parties induce the traditional party to locate at the median policy position, whereas centrist assembly parties move the traditional party away from the median just in the opposite direction of the assembly’s median. Besides, we find that centrist assemblies, with respect to extremist assemblies, have more chances of winning the elections.